.  OP  CALIF.  LIBPJPV.  Tnc<  ANGELES 


INTRUSION 


INTRUSION 


BEATRICE  KEAN  SEYMOUR 

AUTHOR  OF  "INVISIBLE  TIDES" 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  SELTZER 
1922 


COPYRIGHT,      1922,     BY 
THOMAS  SELTZER,   INC. 


All   rights   reserved 

First  Printing,  April,  19Si 
Second  Printing,  June,  192% 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


2132647 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PROLOGUE  ,...•-! 

BOOK  I    .  •  «.  .  •  •  3 

BOOK  II  .  ,  *  *  .  .  .    128 

BOOK  III  ••'•»».«    235 

EPILOGUE  ...«••   335 


PROLOGUE 

IT  was  on  an  afternoon  in  October  that  they  saw  her  first, 
and  to  Guen  Suffield  that  fact  alone  might  well  have  made 
the  day  memorable,  even  if  there  had  not  been  about  it 
some  special  quality  of  memorableness  that  made  her  see  it,  long 
afterwards,  in  the  vivid  way  she  did — as  though  it  has  been 
etched  into  her  mind,  ineffaceably,  like  a  drawing  in  copper. 

The  morning  had  dawned  wild  and  wet,  but  later,  when  some 
of  its  wildness  had  left  it,  you  saw  the  new  day  as  Autumn's 
own — a  little  wistful  in  spirit,  but  exquisitely  dressed  in  green 
and  gold,  hung  about  with  deep  blue  shadows  and  veiled,  every 
now  and  then,  by  the  silver  mist  of  the  fine-driving  rain.  If 
you  looked  closely  you  could  almost  see  Autumn  slipping  a  little 
deeper  into  the  embrace  of  Winter,  her  sombre  lover.  .  .  . 

That,  somehow,  was  how  the  day  stayed,  coloured  and  wistful 
and  reluctant,  in  Guen  Suffield's  mind. 

And  yet  this  is  not  Guen's  story.  .  .  .  It  is  true,  however, 
that  she  is  inextricably  mixed  up  with  the  telling  of  it,  since, 
but  for  her,  neither  Allan  nor  Caryl  would  ever  have  seen 
Roberta,  whose  story  this  really  is. 

That,  at  least,  was  what  Guen  always  contended,  which  was 
why,  after  the  thing  happened,  there  were  times  when  she  felt 
worse  about  it  than  anybody  else:  worse  than  Allan,  worse,  pos- 
sibly, than  Caryl,  both  of  whom  it  so  much  more  closely  con- 
cerned. One  thing  was  certain.  The  thread  of  Allan's  misery 
there,  at  the  end,  was  snapped  suddenly  by  the  sight  of  Caryl's 
and  by  something  else  which  doesn't,  properly,  belong  to  this 
story.  .  .  . 

Guen,  Caryl  and  Allan.  Concerned  as  closely  as,  these 
three  there  was  a  fourth.  Difficult  to  say  how  much  he  suf- 
fered— or  how  long.  Perhaps  Caryl  knew — but  Caryl  never 
said.  She  was  too  deeply  occupied  in  pretending  that  the  thing 
had  never  happened  at  all.  She  wanted  everybody  to  know  that 


2  INTRUSION 

it  hadn't  crushed  her.  She  couldn't  bear  any  of  them  to  think 
her  wound  was  mortal.  You  couldn't  look  at  her  without  realis- 
ing that  she,  at  least,  was  convinced  it  was  not. 

Yet  it  was  always  Caryl  who  stood  in  the  way  of  the  easy 
conclusion  that  Fate  had  been  kind.  Even  though  you  knew 
the  roots  of  her  happiness  went  so  deeply  you  must  kill  her  to 
destroy  them:  even  though  you  knew  there  was  some  little  bit 
of  herself  she  held  always  impregnable;  though  you  realised  that, 
for  Caryl,  there  would  always  be  something  left. 

Certainly  Guen  never  doubted  that  Fate  had  been  kind  to 
Roberta.  "The  best  thing  that  could  have  happened  to  her!" 
she  said  afterwards  and  with  utter  dispassion  to  Tony  Gore, 
who  didn't  agree  with  her.  But  he  couldn't  shake  her  con- 
viction. She  was  quite  certain  Fate  might  have  done  so  much 
worse  for  them  all— even  for  Roberta.  Even  for  Roberta. 
She  put  it  like  that,  remembering  that  Roberta  had  walked 
in  beauty  like  the  night.  .  .  . 

Whatever  else  Guen  and  Allan  forgot  it  wasn't  likely  they 
would  forget  that.  You  don't  forget  beauty  as  unequivocal  as 
Roberta's.  When  you'd  stripped  her  of  everything  else — all 
the  things  you  hated  and  despised  and  despaired  of — the  beauty 
remained.  They  saw  it  always,  Guen  and  Allan,  as  a  vivid, 
enduring  thing — like  dawn  and  sunset  and  the  golden  noon. 

Heaven  only  knows  how  Caryl  saw  it.  When  you  felt  best 
about  it  you  hoped  she  didn't  see  it  at  all;  that  she  had  wiped 
put  Roberta's  beauty  as  she  had  wiped  out  Roberta's  sin. 


INTRUSION 

BOOK  I 
CHAPTER   ONE 


THE  whole  house  was  full  of  Jan's  ragtime.  Played  with 
a  maddening  precision  it  floated  up  to  Guen  in  her  study 
and  offered  yet  another  argument  against  her  attempt  to 
wort.      Every    now    and    then    the    syncopated    notes    came 
ludicrously  muted  by  the  soft  pedal,  as  though  Jan  remembered 
that  his  sister  had  gone  upstairs  to  work  or  that  his  mother 
dozed  on  the  Chesterfield.     Guen  frowned  at  the  ragtime  but 
she  endured  it,  because,  somehow,  one  always  did  "endure" 
things  from  Jan— even  Guen  who  saw  through  him,  perhaps, 
more  than  anybody  else. 

Besides,  it  wasn't  only  the  ragtime.  There  was  the  rain, 
and  the  noise  of  the  river  falling  over  the  lock;  the  sound  of 
hurrying  feet;  the  rustling  of  leaves  on  a  futurist  lawn,  and, 
every  now  and  then,  the  bright  laugh  of  a  girl  out  there  some- 
where on  the  towing-path  that  ran,  like  a  brown  streak,  beyond 
the  green  of  the  garden  gate.  And  also  there  was  the  garden 
itself,  the  one  really  beautiful  thing  about  this  old  stone  house 
at  Teddington  which  the  Suffield  family  had  taken  two  years 
before  to  escape  the  air  raids.  From  the  centre  of  the  lawn  a 
cedar  rose  proudly,  outlined  blackly  against  the  changeable 
autumn  sky.  In  the  broad  borders  Michaelmas  daisies  and 
marguerites  were  growing,  beaten  and  flat  to-day  beneath  the 
heavy  showers;  bronze  and  tawny  chrysanthemums  bloomed 

3 


4  INTRUSION 

in  loose  and  wilful  bunches  in  the  flower-beds,  stabbed  here 
and  there  by  the  red-gold  of  the  tritoma  plant  that  stood  stiff 
and  straight  in  unyielding  defiance  of  the  sheeted  rain — like 
the  spear  of  some  old  god  of  the  sun.  At  the  foot  of  the 
garden  a  black  semi-circle  in  the  far  corner  was  a  summer- 
house,  old  and  dilapidated,  that  Guen  had  wanted  to  write  in 
but  which  she  had  given  up  in  despair,  because  it  harboured 
draughts  and  weird  insects  and  protected  you  neither  from 
the  wind  nor  the  rain.  Beyond  the  summer-house,  a  little 
wooden  gate,  just  latched,  not  bolted;  beyond  that  the  towing- 
path  and  beyond  that  again,  the  river — puckered  and  dimpled, 
this  afternoon,  by  the  rain. 

But  it  was  certainly  the  laugh  of  the  girl  down  there  on 
the  towing-path  that  came  chiefly  between  Guen  and  her  work, 
because  it  was  somehow  incredible  that  here  in  October, 
nineteen-eighteen,  there  could  possibly  be  anyone  left  who 
could  laugh  like  that — as  though  there  had  been  no  four  years' 
slaughter  of  youth  and  the  merriment  that  belongs  to  it.  Even 
now,  with  peace  in  the  air  and  its  messengers  on  the  way, 
Guen  could  not  think,  untouched,  of  the  past  four  years.  The 
Suffields,  it  is  true,  had  come  out  of  the  war  practically 
unscathed,  but  for  Guen,  as  for  all  imaginative  people,  the  war 
was  much  more  than  a  family  affair.  It  was  a  thing  which 
had  bitten  right  down  to  the  heart  of  things,  so  that  nothing 
could  ever  be  quite  the  same  again.  There  in  August,  nine- 
teen-fourteen,  some  little  part  of  you  had  died — the  part  that 
had  laughed  as  that  girl  on  the  towing-path  laughed.  Not  to 
this  world,  at  least,  would  there  ever  be  any  resurrection.  .  .  . 

Suddenly,  as  Guen  looked  down  upon  the  garden  and  remem- 
bered these  things,  the  girl  who  had  laughed  stepped  through 
the  gate  and  like  a  thread  of  bright  colour  came  running 
towards  the  summer-house  across  the  futurist  lawn.  Following 
her  came  a  young  man  in  uniform,  only  more  slowly,  and 
rather  as  if  he  disliked  the  whole  adventure  and  mistrusted 
the  bond-fides  of  the  summer-house. 

They  disappeared,  but  to  the  other  distractions  of  the  after- 
noon was  added  now  the  noise  of  the  garden  gate  as,  insecurely 
fastened,  it  swung  open  and  hurled  itself  to  and  fro  in  help- 
less indignation,  as  if  it  understood  that  the  refugees  in  the 
summer-house  were  going  to  ignore  it.  Guen  pushed  back  her 
papers  and  reflected  that  the  obvious  and  human  thing  to  do 


INTRUSION  5 

was  to  ask  them  into  the  house,  for  that  girl,  ridiculously  clad, 
must  already  be  wet  to  the  skin.  And.  in  any  case,  this  was 
no  afternoon  for  work.  Happily  there  would  be  others.  She 
locked  away  her  manuscript,  pocketed  the  key,  and  went  down- 
stairs. And  all  the  way  Jan's  music  rushed  out  at  her  and 
smote  her,  and  she  thought,  "I  hate  ragtime.  ...  I  wonder 
why?"  Afterwards,  when  her  thoughts  travelled  back  to  this 
afternoon  it  was  Jan's  ragtime  that  affected  her  most.  Always 
it  was  a  twisting  sword,  unendurable,  because  .  .  .  never 
again  would  she  hear  it. 


In  the  drawing-room  nobody  had  heard  or  seen  anything 
at  all.  In  there,  with  Jan  at  the  piano,  life  lapsed  gently  by — 
a  syncopated  prelude  to  afternoon  tea.  Mrs.  Sumeld  slept 
peacefully  and  beautifully  on  the  Chesterfield,  for  she  was 
still  pretty  at  fifty-two.  Leader,  Jan's  dog,  with  his  nose  up 
against  the  warm  fender,  behaved  as  though  he  slept,  too, 
though  the  look  he  bent  upon  Guen  as  she  entered  said  plainly 
that  sleep  was  impossible  while  his  master  continued  to  make 
that  queer  noise  on  the  black  box  in  the  corner.  But  at  Guen's 
instigation  the  queer  noise  ceased,  and  Jan  went  out  on  to  the 
doorstep  and  invited  the  couple  in  the  summer-house  to  come 
in.  The  couple  in  the  summer-house,  however,  did  not  rush 
to  accept  the  offer.  A  head  and  a  pair  of  uniformed  shoulders 
appeared  round  the  edge  of  the  summer-house,  and  the  owner 
of  them  replied  that  he  thought  they  were  all  right  there,  thanks 
very  much.  He  sounded  stiff  and  indifferent,  ungrateful,  even. 
Guen  thought  Jan  had  better  have  another  shot. 

"You'll  find  it  a  good  deal  drier  in  here,  you  know.  You'd 
better  try  it,"  he  shouted. 

The  head  and  shoulders  disappeared.  There  was  a  murmur 
of  conversation,  that  pretty  laugh  again,  a  flash  o'f  green  and 
gold-red  and  white  on  the  lawn,  and  a  slim  damp  figure  landed 
itself  there  on  the  doorstep  at  Jan's  side. 

"Thanks  awfully,''  said  a  charming  voice.  "Isn't  it  a  hell 
of  a  day?" 

"Quite,"  said  Jan.  But  he  blinked — not  because  of  her 
language,  to  which  he  was  used,  but  because  of  her  beauty,  to 
which  even  Jan  was  not. 


6  INTRUSION 

They  were  certainly  very  wet,  and  Mrs.  Suffield,  rising  up 
from  the  Chesterfield,  eyed  them  with  undisguised  concern, 
seeing  in  them  already,  perhaps,  two  more  victims  of  the  influ- 
enza epidemic.  So  Guen  took  the  girl  upstairs  and  found  her 
some  dry  clothes  of  her  own,  and  the  young  man  in  uniform 
followed  Jan  upon  a  similar  errand.  He  went,  Mrs.  Suffield 
thought,  as  one  who  lodged  a  protest,  as  though,  even  now,  he 
was  meditating  flight.  She  was  a  kind  woman,  and  putting 
it  down  to  shyness  was  instantly  sorry  for  him,  for  shyness,  so 
her  children  had  many  times  told  her,  was  a  dreadful  handicap 
in  life. 

But  Anne  Suffield  was  wasting  her  sympathy,  as,  five  minutes 
later,  Jan  could  have  told  her  if  he  had  thought  it  was  the 
sort  of  thing  she  would  have  liked  to  hear  or  the  sort  of  thing 
mothers  should  be  told.  However,  by  the  time  he  came  down- 
stairs Mrs.  Suffield  had  gone  off  to  hurry  forward  the  pleasant 
meal  of  tea,  and  there  was  nobody  in  the  drawing-room  but 
Guen,  who  was  making  a  good  deal  of  noise  with  the  poker 
in  the  interest  of  a  moribund  fire.  Jan  shut  the  door  with 
emphasis,  and  with  equal  emphasis  remarked  that  he  was 
damned. 

"Why?"  asked  Guen,  but  she  stopped  making  the  noise  with 
the  poker  and  sat  back  on  her  heels  and  looked  at  him. 

"My  dear  old  thing,  he  doesn't  even  know  her  name.  He 
picked  her  up  half  an  hour  ago,  outside  our  garden-gate." 

And  Jan  laughed.  He  didn't  himself  "pick  girls  up."  He 
was  too  fastidious  for  that:  but  there  were  other  ways  of 
accomplishing  the  same  result,  and  Jan  was  master  of  them  all. 

"How  do  you  know?"  Guen  asked. 

"He  told  me  so.  Said  he  thought  he  owed  it  to  us.  ... 
What  rot!  Besides,  what  a  mean  skunk  to  give  a  girl  away 
like  that." 

If  Jan  hadn't  "picked  a  girl  up"  in  his  life,  neither  had  he 
ever  given  a  girl  "away."  One  was  risky  and  the  other  cad- 
dish. Jan's  code  of  honour  might  be  a  queer  thing,  and 
limited:  but  within  those  limits  it  was  certainly  rigid. 

Guen  smiled.  She  could  see  that,  in  Jan's  opinion,  young 
Ancell,  for  that  seemed  to  be  his  name,  had  bungled  the  whole 
business.  He  had  had  half  an  hour,  anyhow,  in  which  to 
discover  the  girl's  name.  He  was  not  only  a  skunk,  but  a 
fool.  Guen  recognised,  of  course,  that  no  man  has  any  right 


INTRUSION  7 

to  be  both,  but  she  felt  a  certain  amount  of  sympathy,  all  the 
same,  with  young  Ancell.  For  neither  had  she  discovered  the 
name  of  this  girl.  True,  she  had  only  had  three  minutes  to 
his  half-hour,  but  that  would  not  really  have  made  any  differ- 
ence, because  names,  to  Guen,  were  so  much  less  important 
than  the  people  to  whom  they  belonged. 

Then  the  girl  herself  came  in  and  immediately  Guen  was 
smitten  with  the  thought  that,  somewhere,  she  had  seen  her 
before.  She  had  on  a  blue  frock  of  Guen's  and  a  pair  of  red 
shoes  that  were  Guen's  also,  and  a  size  too  large.  Her  hair, 
still  damp  from  its  encounter  with  the  afternoon,  curled  round 
her  head  like  a  nimbus.  Faintly  flushed  and  guiltless  of  pow- 
der, her  skin  was  that  wonderful  thing  that  should  belong  to 
red  hair,  but  which,  perhaps  mercifully,  seldom  does.  Her 
eyes,  queerly  hazel,  considering  that  hair  and  skin,  were  very 
bright  in  a  face  that  was  a  small,  pure  oval.  But  queerer 
than  the  hazel  eyes  were  the  long  lashes  that  shaded  them; 
that  curled  upwards  and  were  dark,  save  at  the  edges  which 
showed  bronze,  like  her  hair.  (You  really  could  forgive  people 
for  saying  she  "made  up.")  Her  mouth  Guen  judged  too 
small,  perhaps,  for  intelligence,  but  since  it  carried  a  dimple 
in  each  corner  few  men  would  find  fault  with  it.  The  only 
word  Guen  could  think  of  when  she  looked  at  her  was  "deli- 
cious," forgetting  that  years  ago  she  had  learned  at  school  that 
"delicious"  is  a  word  you  can  only  apply,  legitimately,  to  some- 
thing you  are  able  to  eat.  This  new-comer  had  the  extraor- 
dinary lighted-up  beauty  that  puts  out  all  other,  and  Jan 
thought  that  never  before  had  he  seen  Guen  look  so  plain. 
Even  her  hair,  which  he  always  rather  admired,  he  saw  now 
as  an  indeterminate  mass  of  uninteresting  brown. 

Guen,  looking  deeper  than  Jan,  saw  something  that  he  did 
not  see — that  would  not  have  made  any  difference  if  he  had. 
This  beautiful  face  was  a  mask:  there  was  nothing  whatever 
behind  it.  But  even  beautiful  masks  are  rare,  and  to  that 
extent,  at  least,  Guen  found  this  one  pleasing  enough  to  look 
at,  though  troubled  all  the  time  by  the  conviction  that  she 
had  seen  it  before.  Its  owner,  so  Jan  elicited,  was  Roberta 
Leigh.  She  seemed  anxious  that  he  should  spell  it  like  that, 
and  announced  that  her  friends  called  her  "Bobbie." 

"Wish  I  were  a  friend,"  said  Jan.     "Have  a  cigarette?" 


8  INTRUSION 

"Oh  go  on,"  said  Miss  Leigh,  taking  the  cigarette  and  light- 
ing up  with  aplomb.  "When's  the  old  war  going  to  end?" 

"Ask  me  another,"  said  Jan,  who  was  bored  by  the  war  as 
a  topic  of  conversation. 

"It'll  be  funny  without  it,  you  know,"  Miss  Leigh  told  them. 
She  was  one  of  the  people  who  had  grown  used  to  the  war, 
who  had  used  it  first  as  a  fillip  to  life  and  then  as  a  back- 
ground against  which  she  draped  the  whole  of  her  existence — 
a  rather  paltry  thing,  Guen  felt,  like  the  conversation,  which 
did  not  seem  to  include  her.  She  stood  by  the  long  windows 
and  looked  out  on  to  the  rain-swept  garden,  and  wondered  why 
suddenly  she  should  see  not  the  garden  at  all,  but  a  dawn  of 
opal  and  pearl  in  which  she  had  sat  waiting  for  Allan  to  come 
down  to  breakfast.  Allan,  who,  there  at  three  in  the  morning, 
had  been  going  back  to  France.  .  .  .  Outside,  the  April 
morning  had  been  dark  and  still.  No  movement  at  all — and 
no  sound,  save,  suddenly,  the  clear,  unbearable  whistling  of  a 
blackbird. 

All  that  was  over.  The  horrors  she  had  feared  for  Allan  had 
passed  him  by.  Allan,  save  that  he  limped  a  little,  was  safe 
and  well.  But  that  girl's  laugh — so  cheerful,  so  heartless,  like 
the  blackbird's  cry  that  April  morning — had  brought  these 
things  drifting  back.  In  time,  perhaps,  one  would  forget 
them.  .  .  . 

But  because,  to-day,  she  remembered,  Guen's  heart  rose 
within,  her  hot  and  bitter,  and  she  hated  the  owner  of  this 
beautiful  mask  to  whom  the  war  was  not  a  cockpit  but  a  cock- 
tail. She  turned  and  fled. 

Miss  Leigh  prattled  on.  Prattled  was  certainly  the  word: 
she  had  no  conversation,  but  just  a  string  of  nouns  and  verbs 
and  adjectives,  but  chiefly  adjectives.  Not  that  Jan  minded. 
If  a  girl  was  as  pretty  as  all  that  it  didn't  matter  in  the  least 
what  she  said. 

Lieutenant  Ancell,  coming  in  presently  in  Jan's  clothes,  made 
Guen's  discovery — that  the  string  of  words  was  not  inclusive. 
He  sat  down  and  tried  to  hide  himself  behind  the  pages  of 
the  Daily  Telegraph  which  he  found  lying  on  a  chair.  He 
looked  as  pathetic  as  a  person  reading  the  morning  paper  after 
midday  always  does  look,  and  Alice,  Anne  Suffield's  excellent 
maid,  coming  in  with  the  tea-tray,  was  suddenly  sorry  for  him. 
Not  because  of  the  newspaper,  however,  but  because  she  thought 


INTRUSION  9 

Roberta  belonged  to  him  and  that  she  deserved  to  have  her 
ears  boxed. 

But  Roberta,  of  course,  did  not  belong  to  him,  and  he  read 
the  Telegraph  (though  "read"  is  scarcely  the  word)  with  a 
foot  tapping  the  floor  and  a  general  air  of  impatience,  as  though 
he  would  be  gone.  He  cared  nothing  whatever  for  Roberta  or 
her  social  shortcomings.  He  didn't  even  care  for  her  beauty — 
which  had  betrayed  him  into  this.  He  only  wanted  to  be 
wearing  his  own  things  and  to  be  gone. 

Alice  laid  tea  with  a  certain  emphasis,  which  expressed  not 
only  her  opinion  of  Roberta,  but  her  prejudice  against  the 
laying  of  five  o'clock  tea  at  a  quarter  to  four.  And  when  it 
was  done  she  went  out  into  the  kitchen  and  pushed  young 
Ancell's  coat  nearer  the  fire,  so  that  some  of  Roberta's  things, 
hurt  at  Alice's  favouritism,  fell  down  among  the  ashes  and 
had  to  be  hastily  rescued.  They  were  cheap  clothes,  much 
be-ribboned  and  be-laced,  and  bore  distinct  traces  of  Roberta's 
dislike  of  needle  and  thread.  Alice  did  not  approve  of  them. 
She  had  been  carefully  brought  up  by  parents  who,  without 
knowing  it,  agreed  with  the  popular  music-hall  song  which 
asserted  that  the  index  to  feminine  morality  was  the  feminine 
washing  on  the  line.  Moreover,  Alice  had  an  unreasoning 
dislike  of  red-haired  people,  even  when  they  were  as  pretty  as 
Roberta  and  had  managed  to  elude  the  light  eyelashes  which 
were  its  proper  concomitant,  and  she  considered  that  this  par- 
ticular red-haired  girl  had  been  getting  on  much  too  well  with 
Mr.  Jan  in  the  drawing-room.  If  you  asked  Alice,  the  red- 
haired  girl  was  a  minx.  .  .  . 


Tea,  so  far  as  Guen  was  concerned,  turned  out  a  very  dull 
meal.  Even  Leader's  one  trick  didn't  enliven  matters,  because 
Roberta  said  "Good  dog!"  at  the  wrong  moment  and  shattered 
his  nerve,  so  that  he  did  the  trick  even  less  successfully  than 
usual.  Jan's  triumph  as  a  social  entity,  however,  was  emphatic, 
if  one  might  judge  by  the  number  of  times  Roberta's  pretty, 
callous  laughter  rippled  out  and  over  the  room.  Guen,  hear- 
ing it  across  her  desultory  conversation  with  young  Ancell, 
wondered  why  anything  so  pretty  should  remind  her  of  so 
many  things  she  wanted  to  forget.  And  whenever  her  eyes 


io  INTRUSION 

rested  upon  Roberta's  face  she  was  certain  that  somewhere  she 
had  seen  her  before.  Only  where — and  when? 

There  at  her  silver  tea-tray,  pink  and  flushed  and  smiling, 
Anne  Suffield  sat  and  dispensed  tea.  The  drawing-room  was 
red  and  stereotyped  and  rather  ugly,  but  in  it  Anne  Suffield 
looked  like  a  pink  rose  in  a  poppy  field.  That  was  the  sort  of 
beauty  hers  had  been — delicate,  like  a  pastel-drawing  or  a 
piece  of  old  china  set  in  the  sun.  The  ghost  of  it  hung  about 
her  now  and  made  people  who  admired  it  (or  who  remem- 
bered what  it  had  once  been)  say  that  none  of  her  children 
had  inherited  her  beautiful  skin.  It  was  quite  true:  they 
hadn't.  At  least,  not  if  your  standard  was  porcelainic — pink 
and  white  and  fragile.  Guen's  skin  was  brown,  surmounted, 
when  she  was  warm  or  excited,  with  pink.  She  was  neither, 
this  afternoon,  so  she  remained  a  study  in  brown.  Brown  skin 
and  brown  eyes,  that  were  quiet  and  brooding  beneath  their 
short  lids,  and  hair  that  was  all  shades  of  brown  and  quite 
straight.  She  wore  it  short,  not  because  it  was  fashionable — • 
it  had  been  short  long  before  then — but  because  it  was  com- 
fortable. 

Not  talking  much,  Anne  Suffield  sat  there  at  her  tea-tray, 
gathering  up  the  odds  and  ends  of  what  Roberta  was  saying 
to  Jan.  She  couldn't  make  much  of  them:  chiefly  they  seemed 
to  be  odd  little  bits  of  slang  and  the  queer,  over-worked  exple- 
tives of  the  modern  girl.  Not  that  Anne  Suffield  really  minded. 
She  had  long  since  learned  to  take  anything  anybody  said 
without  turning  a  hair;  and  yet  she  was  at  heart  a  thoroughly 
old-fashioned  woman.  She  did  not  think  it  at  all  nice  for 
young  women  to  swear  or  use  so  much  slang,  or  to  smoke,  or 
to  do  a  good  many  of  the  other  things  they  did  do.  She  couldn't 
pretend  that  she  liked  it  personally,  and  she  thought,  vaguely, 
that  war  wasn't  good  for  young  women.  But  she  was  proud, 
this  afternoon,  of  Jan  and  the  witty  things  he  said,  because 
she  did  not  know  that  you  did  not  need  to  be  particularly 
witty  to  make  a  girl  laugh  when  her  teeth  were  as  pretty  as 
Roberta's.  But  Guen  did,  so  she  did  not  think  Jan  so  clever 
or  so  witty  as  her  mother  thought  him. 

Lieutenant  Ancell,  of  course,  didn't  think  him  clever  or  witty 
in  the  least  degree.  You  couldn't  expect  it. 


INTRUSION  ii 

\ 

4 

Towards  the  end  of  the  meal  a  tall  dark  girl  arrived  whom 
Anne  Suffield  introduced  to  Roberta  as  "Miss  Hervey"  and 
addressed  affectionately  as  "Madeleine."  Madeleine  Hervey 
was  an  old  friend  of  the  Suffields,  and  with  Allan  and  Guen 
was  going  on,  after  an  early  dinner,  to  a  literary  lecture.  For 
the  past  seven  months  her  home  had  been  in  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
but  nearly  a  week  ago  she  had  come  up  to  dig  out  some  refer- 
ences for  her  employer.  They  had  taken  so  long,  she  said, 
when  the  introductions  were  over,  that  they  had  eaten  into  the 
two  days  she  had  hoped  to  spend  at  Mount  Calm. 

"I  simply  must  go  back  to-morrow  morning,"  she  told  them; 
"I'm  wretchedly  disappointed." 

Anne  Suffield's  eyes  approved  her  for  the  adverb.  Caryl  or 
Jan,  of  course,  would  have  said  "horribly"  or  "dreadfully"  or 
"beastly."  Guen,  too,  perhaps,  for  in  her  mother's  opinion  her 
speech  lacked  the  dignity  of  her  written  word.  But  Madeleine, 
somehow,  had  escaped  the  domination  of  the  devastating  adjec- 
tive and  adverb,  as  she  had  escaped  the  modern  tricks  of  the 
casual  expletive  and  the  eternal  cigarette.  Madeleine  did 
smoke,  but  only  occasionally,  not  so  much  because  she  didn't 
care  about  it,  as  because  she  cared  more  about  fresh  air.  (At 
least,  Madeleine  called  it  "fresh  air" — most  other  people  called 
it  a  draught.)  Somehow  she  stood  alone.  In  a  generation  that 
ambled  she  came  moving  like  a  thoroughbred. 

Mrs.  Suffield  offered  her  tea  and  the  opinion  that  Allan  would 
be  very  disappointed.  Madeleine  said,  "Will  he?"  and  hast- 
ened on,  as  though,  here,  the  conversational  ground  was  shift- 
ing. With  the  colour  in  her  pale  face  she  darted  back  and 
took  refuge  in  the  British  Museum.  Ungratefully  she  com- 
plained that  the  Reading  Room  had  been  hotter  than  ever 
to-day,  that  it  had  given  her  a  headache.  Anne  Suffield  said 
that  once,  years  ago,  someone  had  let  her  stand  just  inside  the 
swing  doors  of  the  Reading  Room  and  look  round.  You 
gathered  that  she  had  been  impressed.  So  many  books  and  so 
many  people  and  everybody  looking  so  busy.  All  united,  she 
remembered  thinking,  in  the  common  desire  for  knowledge. 

"No,  mother  dear,  for  sleep,"  interposed  Guen  from  out  the 
vague  struggle  that  was  her  conversation  with  young  Ancell. 

"Yes,"  said  Madeleine.     "I've  never  understood  why  the 


12  INTRUSION 

insomnious  haven't  discovered  it.  It  would  be  a  lot  cheaper 
than  drugs." 

Jan  and  Roberta,  who  had  been  momentarily  arrested  by 
Guen's  interposition  from  the  corner,  were  not  in  the  least 
interested  in  the  Reading  Room  of  the  British  Museum.  They 
had  never  been  there  in  their  lives,  and  did  not  intend,  if 
they  could  help  it,  to  go.  They  went  back  to  their  string  of 
words  that  did  duty  as  conversation,  and  Mrs.  Suffield  suddenly 
looked  at  the  clock  and  remarked  that  Caryl  must  have  missed 
her  train. 

Caryl  was  the  youngest  Suffield  and  had  been  week-ending 
urthe  country. 

"With  the  Hestons,"  Mrs.  Suffield  told  Madeleine.  "You 
remember  the  Hestons?  Marjorie  and  Jack?  We  used  to 
think  at  one  time  that  he  was  fond  of  Caryl.  They've  taken  a 
cottage  down  in  Berkshire,  near  Wokingham,  and  Caryl  goes 
down  a  good  deal.  Dear  child,  it's  so  nice  for  her!  I'm  sure 
she's  working  much  too  hard.  It's  such  a  handy  place,  Wok- 
ingham.  You  -come  straight  through  to  Clapham  Junction  on 
the  South  Western.  It's  really  an  excellent  journey." 

As  she  poured  out  for  Madeleine  a  second  cup  of  tea  she 
seemed  to  find  that  a  thing  of  infinite  consolation — that  the 
journey  from  Wokingham  to  Teddington  was  really  an  excel- 
lent one. 


And  then,  five  minutes  later,  young  Ancell  rose  to  go.  Guen 
rose,  too,  and  mentally  stretched  herself,  hoping  that  nobody 
would  put  obstacles  in  his  way.  She  had  found  it  very  diffi- 
cult to  talk  to  him.  He  didn't  care  for  books  or  music  or  the 
theatre,  and  certainly  he  didn't  care  for  the  Army,  and  was 
finding  the  war  dull  because  he  had  been  wounded  in  one  of 
the  back-to-the-wall  battles  in  April  last  and  was  still  in 
hospital.  (So  much,  at  least,  she  had  got  out  of  him.)  In 
some  sense,  Guen  felt,  the  "picking  up"  of  Roberta  had  been 
are  action  from  these  things  of  anti-climax,  for  Roberta  cer- 
tainly looked  as  though  she  would  make  life  considerably 
more  worth  while.  Obviously,  however,  she  hadn't,  and 
altogether  young  Ancell  had  had  a  wretched  afternoon.  He 
was,  Guen  felt,  quite  a  nice  boy,  though  it  had  been  rather 


INTRUSION  13 

mean  of  him  to  give  Roberta  away  so  easily.  There  she 
agreed  with  Jan.  One  really  ought  not  to  shout  one's  mistakes 
from  the  house-tops.  .  .  .  But  because  she  was  sorry  for  him 
she  combated  her  mother's  officious  attempts  to  keep  him 
from  his  damp  clothes — and  the  doctor.  In  Roberta's  case, 
however,  she  was  adamant,  so  Jan  passed  over  his  notebook 
that  she  might  write  down  her  address.  The  clothes  could 
then  be  sent  on. 

"I  will  not  have  you  both  on  my  conscience,"  Anne  Suffield 
said,  "one  of  you  will  be  more  than  sufficient." 

Jan  looked  at  the  untidy  mess  Roberta  had  made  of  his 
notebook  and  smiled  at  what  she  had  written — "Bobbie  Leigh, 
202  Manningtree  Avenue,  Highgate,  N." 

They  had  all  heard  of  Manningtree  Avenue,  for  Highgate, 
when  there  was  no  war,  was  their  home,  and,  optimistically, 
they  still  cherished  hopes  of  some  day  returning  to  it.  To 
.Anne  Suffield,  Manningtree  Avenue  was  a  name,  signifying 
nothing:  but  to  Jan  and  Guen  and  Madeleine  it  was  a  dull 
street  of  three-story  houses  let  out  these  days  to  two  families 
or  more.  It  was  a  decayed  street — not  even  cheerfully  and 
blatantly  ugly — where  too  many  children  played  and  street 
criers  and  barrel-organs  went  unrestrained.  It  appalled  Guen 
that  Roberta  belonged  to  so  dreary  a  place,  that  she  was 
taking  her  youth  and  beauty  back  to  it.  You  couldn't  wonder 
she  made  life  livelier  by  the  creation  of  casual  acquaintance- 
ships. Poor  child!  Fate  had  not  been  too  kind.  That  it 
should  have  given  Roberta  so  little  beside  that  beautiful 
appearance  struck  her  suddenly  as  outrageous — like  giving  her 
a  palace  and  no  banking  account. 

"Of  course,  Haighgate's  very  naice,"  Roberta  was  saying 
to  Madeleine,  "but  you  do  miss  the  river,  don't  you?" 

Her  voice,  for  all  its  affected  pronunciation,  was  remarkably 
pretty.  It  had,  so  Guen  thought,  the  qualities  of  a  physical 
caress.  It  was  like  a  paw,  incredibly  soft,  which  reached  out 
and  stroked  their  faces. 

"But  there's  the  Heath,  you  know,"  Madeleine  replied.  "To 
me  the  river  doesn't  nearly  make  up  for  its  loss.  But  then, 
I  haven't  any  river  tricks.  I  don't  row  or  punt." 

"Oh,  neither  do  I,"  said  Roberta.  "Rowing  spoils  your 
hands,  but  there's  always  plenty  of  naice  boys  who  do." 

Guen   felt  there  would  be,   somehow,   for  Roberta.     Even 


14  INTRUSION 

with  a  war  on,  and  that  accent  and  that  awful  background  of 
Manningtree  Avenue. 

As  they  trooped  into  the  hall  Jan  managed,  somehow,  to 
get  a  word  with  Roberta,  and  the  end  of  what  he  said  drifted 
out  to  Madeleine.  "All  right,  then.  To-morrow.  That's 
settled.  Don't  forget."  She  wondered  for  an  instant  what  it 
was  that  Roberta  was  not  to  forget  and  what  it  was  they  had 
"settled."  But  only  indifferently,  because  Jan,  she  knew,  was 
incorrigible  where  a  pretty  face  was  concerned,  and  besides, 
Madeleine  did  not  like  Jan,  and  was  not  given  to  wasting 
conjecture  upon  him. 

The  grandfather  clock  in  the  hall  was  striking  the  quarter- 
past  five  as  the  good-byes  were  being  said,  and  Madeleine  fell 
to  wondering  why  they  had  all  trooped  out  in  this  ridiculous 
fashion  to  see  two  people  off  whom,  an  hour  ago,  they  had 
never  met.  Then  Jan's  hand  was  on  the  door-knob.  He  turned 
it,  and  a  young  man,  key  in  hand,  looked  in  upon  them. 

Afterwards  they  tried,  some  of  them,  to  pretend  that  they 
saw,  even  then,  the  finger  of  fate  in  his  appearance  at  that 
particular  moment.  But,  of  course,  they  couldn't  possibly 
have  done.  They  didn't,  any  of  them,  see  anything  at  all  save 
the  perfectly  ordinary  phenomenon  of  a  young  man  coming 
home  early,  as  he  had  promised;  that  he  had  two  large  volumes 
(publishers'  "remainders"  as  Guen  knew)  under  his  arm,  and 
a  black  smudge  across  the  bridge  of  his  nose. 

"Hallo,  Allan!"  said  Guen,  and  Allan  came  in. 


CHAPTER   TWO 


HE  was  a  plain  edition  of  Jan,  and  he  limped  a  little, 
which  detracted,  somehow,  from  his  height.  Just 
now,  too,  he  looked  tired,  and  there  was  that  black 
smudge  on  the  bridge  of  his  nose.  ...  If  it  was  a  less 
handsome  face  than  Jan's  it  was  also  a  more  sensitive  one. 
People  meeting  Allan  casually  remembered  for  long  after- 
wards some  look  in  his  deep-set  eyes,  something  unusually 
tender  about  his  mouth — that  was  wide  and  not  beautiful  in 
any  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  He  had  the  look  of  one 
who  sees  and  feels  more  than  most  other  people,  which  means 
that  he  suffered,  or  could  suffer,  more  as  well. 

"Hallo!"  he  said  now,  as  he  stepped  into  the  hall.  "What's 
up?"  And  then  he  saw  Ancell  and  Roberta,  or,  more  properly, 
he  understood  that  a  stranger  in  a  Second  Lieutenant's  uni- 
form was  there.  Really,  of  course,  he  saw  nothing  and  no 
one  at  all  but  Roberta.  She  stood  there  with  her  flaming 
hair  curling  up  over  the  edge  of  her  green  wool  hat,  her 
hands  dug  deeply  into  the  pockets  of  the  jersey  that  was  Guen's, 
and  her  delicate  complexion  intensified  by  the  hot  tea  she 
had  drunk — and  the  stronger  brew  that  had  been  Jan's  admir- 
ing glances.  Once  again,  performing  the  introductions,  Guen 
was  caught  by  the  sense  of  familiarity.  Somewhere  she  had 
seen  Roberta  in  some  such  hat  and  jersey,  her  hands  dug 
deeply  into  the  pockets,  and  smiling,  as  she  smiled  now  on 
Allan.  Her  attitude  gave  to  Guen  the  sense  of  a  thing  studied, 
cultivated  before  a  mirror.  But  she  felt  that  Roberta  smiled 
upon  Allan  because  she  always  did  smile  upon  the  young 
men  who  swam  into  her  orbit,  and  because,  usually,  they  liked 
it.  Not  that  Roberta  cared  whether  Allan  liked  it  or  not. 
She  thought  him  a  very  uninteresting  edition  of  his  handsome 
brother,  and  she  considered  that  a  man  looked  ridiculous 
with  a  smudge  on  his  nose.  Yet  she  was  not  unconscious 

IS 


1 6  INTRUSION 

that  his  eyes  were  on  her  face,  and  that  he  was  returning  her 
smile.  Something  she  read  in  the  look  he  gave  her  sent  a 
glow  of  flattered  vanity  through  her  soul — what  there  was 
of  it — and  she  laughed.  That  pretty  laugh  that  was  heartless 
and  a  little  cruel — that  already  Guen  hated.  But  what  Roberta 
said  was  for  Jan,  who  was  dragging  Leader  back  into  the  hall. 

"That's  a  funny  name  for  a  dog,"  she  said.  "Why  did  you 
give  it  him?" 

"I  didn't,"  said  Jan.  "My  brother  here  chose  it.  After 
some  dog  in  a  book.  ..." 

"Oh,  I  see,"  said  Roberta. 

But  Allan  could  see  she  didn't,  and  was  moved  to  explain. 

"Emily  Bronte,"  he  said,  "had  a  dog  called  Leader." 

"And  who,"  asked  Roberta  sweetly,  "was  Emily  Bronte?" 

Allan  smiled. 

"She  isn't  read  nowadays,"  he  said.  "She  wrote  a  book 
called  Wuthering  Heights  and  some  poems." 

"Oh,  an  authoress,"  said  Roberta,  with  a  magnificent  air  of 
condescension. 

Quite  suddenly,  and  without  another  word,  Allan  turned 
away,  hung  up  his  hat  and  began  to  struggle  out  of  his  coat. 
From  her  corner  by  the  stairs  Madeleine  stepped  forward  and 
helped  him. 

"Hullo,  Mad!"  he  said. 

She  knew  then  that,  until  that  moment,  he  hadn't  seen  her 
at  all.  He  had  seen  no  one  save  Roberta,  flushed,  smiling, 
delicious.  (The  word  had  come  to  him,  too.)  Even  now  it 
was  not  at  Madeleine  he  looked,  but  at  Roberta,  flirting  her 
way  down  to  the  gate,  with  Jan  at  her  side  and  Leader,  scenting 
a  walk,  barking  furiously  at  her  heels.  Her  last  look  and  smile 
were  for  Jan. 

Back  there  in  the  hall  Allan  looked  at  Madeleine.  He 
thought  she  looked  tired,  and  he  resented  it,  because  he  was 
tired  himself.  .  .  .  He  forgot  that  anybody  would  have 
looked  tired  after  Roberta.  Or  perhaps  he  didn't  know.  .  .  * 


Allan  declined  tea  because  dinner  was  to  be  ready  at  six. 
He  felt  suddenly  dull  and  dispirited,  and  it  was  certainly  some- 
body's fault  that  there  were  no  letters  for  him.  He  stood 


INTRUSION  17 

there  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece,  taking  no  notice  of  an 
eager  Leader,  and  not  talking:  completely  forgetful  of 
Madeleine,  whom  he  had  looked  forward  so  much  to  seeing; 
whom  he  hadn't  seen  for  many  months.  Worse  than  that, 
he  had  forgotten  how  much  he  had  wanted  to  see  her.  It 
was  Guen  who  thought  of  Madeleine. 

"Headache?"  she  asked. 

Madeleine  said  yes  and  put  it  on  to  the  Reading  Room. 
Guen  recommended  aspirin,  and  Jan  went  off  to  fetch  it. 
They  heard  him  whistling  all  the  way  upstairs,  as  if  he  felt 
tremendously  gay,  as  he  probably  did.  Guen  and  Madeleine 
sat  talking  of  Roberta:  they  were  sure,  both  of  them,  that 
somewhere  they  had  seen  her  before.  But  neither  could  think 
where.  Allan  learned  that  they  found  her  nice  to  look  at, 
but  rather  boring  as  a  conversationalist,  and  interrupted  to  say 
that  most  people  were,  if  it  came  to  that.  His  voice  was  so 
heavy  with  grievance  that  Guen  laughed. 

"Poor  old  Allan!"  she  said.     "Is  that  how  you  feel?" 

Allan  said  nothing — merely  sat  there  glooming  by  the  fire 
and  frowning  at  Guen's  attempts  to  work  out  the  problem  of 
Roberta's  identity.  For  some  reason  or  other  it  seemed  to  get 
on  his  nerves,  and  suddenly  he  rapped  out  at  them : 

"Oh,  for  God's  sake  leave  her  alone,  both  of  you.  We 
shan't  see  her  again,  so  what  does  it  matter?" 

They  were,  all  of  them,  very  sure  of  that — except  Jan,  and 
Jan  was  very  sure  that  he  would.  But  Allan's  irritability 
stung  them  into  silence.  They  sat  there  listening  to  Jan's 
cheerful  whistling.  He  was  a  long  time  over  the  aspirin  hunt, 
but  Madeleine  had  forgotten  the  aspirin  and  her  need  of  it. 
She  sat  there  realising  that  here  was  the  end — not  the  begin- 
ning as  she  had  hoped,  for  which,  ever  since  that  day,  just  a 
year  ago,  when  she  had  gone  to  see  Allan  in  hospital,  she 
seemed  to  have  been  waiting.  And  it  had  never  come.  There 
had  never  been  anything  more  than  that  stupendous  wave  of 
feeling  in  which  she  had  been  like  to  drown,  sitting  there  at 
Allan's  white  bedside.  She  knew,  now,  that  there  never  would 
be.  It  bore  you  up  and  it  cast  you  down.  There  was  no  more 
in  it  than  that. 

Allan  and  Madeleine  had  known  each  other  from  their 
schooldays — from  the  time  when  she  had  been  brought  home 
to  tea  by  Guen,  and  her  twin  brother  Reg  had  played  with 


1 8  INTRUSION 

Allan  in  their  school  eleven.  (But  Reg,  poor  boy,  had  thrown 
his  last  ball.  Done  with  games,  and  not  needing  them,  he 
slept  very  peacefully  now  beneath  the  Turkish  sky.)  In  a  way, 
perhaps,  Allan  and  Madeleine  had  known  each  other  too 
well,  so  that  the  ways  of  friendship  had  seemed  so  much 
pleasanter,  so  much  more  natural,  than  the  ways  of  love. 
Moreover,  they  were  uncannily  self-possessed:  had  kept  their 
heads  even  over  the  war.  They  remained  "friends"  even  when 
Allan  went  out  in  nineteen-fifteen  to  France,  and  when  he 
came  home  on  leave.  It  didn't  look  as  though  anything  else 
at  that  time  had  entered  their  heads. 

Until  that  day  in  hospital.  .  .  . 

Madeleine  remembered  this  afternoon,  and  very  vividly, 
how  the  thing  had  come  to  her.  She  had  gone  alone  that  day 
to  the  Hospital,  and  the  Sister  of  the  ward  had  come  over  to 
say  how  much  better  the  patient  seemed.  "I'm  afraid,"  she 
said,  "that  he's  always  going  to  be  a  little  lame,  but  there  are 
no  more  wars — ever — for  him."  These  two  facts — that  he 
would  be  lame  and  that  he  would  never  fight  again — it  was 
which  suddenly  opened  up  the  truth  to  Madeleine.  It  was 
like  lifting  a  curtain  to  the  sunrise — one  felt  dazed  and  blinded 
afterwards.  .  .  .  New  and  startlingly  precious  these  two  facts 
stared  at  her  until,  slowly,  they  merged  into  one.  "A  lame 
man's  no  use  to  them!" — then  divided  again,  "He  belongs, 
now — to  me." 

Later,  she  thought  she  must  have  been  mad.  .  .  .  All  the 
same,  it  was  unendingly  strange  that  the  madness  should  have 
seized  hold  upon  her  there  in  that  quiet  place  of  rest  and 
healing.  She  had  -been  sane  enough  during  the  misery  that 
was  August,  nineteen-fourteen,  and  that  greater  misery  that 
was  France. 

But  in  the  days  that  followed  Allan  showed  no  sign  at  all 
of  realizing  that  anything  between  them  was  altered  or  altering. 
Quite  quietly  and  naturally  he  picked  up  again  the  silver 
thread  of  their  happy  friendship,  not  seeing  that  now  it  dragged 
its  way  through  Madeleine's  fingers  like  an  iron  chain,  tearing 
the  flesh.  .  .  . 

It  was  in  the  March  of  the  following  year  that  John  Osenton, 
to  whom  Madeleine  acted  as  secretary,  and  for  whom  she  did 
research  work,  bought  a  house  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  whence 
with  his  household  he  departed.  After  that  there  was  nothing 


INTRUSION  19 

between  Allan  and  Madeleine  but  letters,  and  letters,  with  a 
person  of  Allan's  temperament  and  his  flair  for  words,  are  apt 
to  be  dangerous  things.  Either  Allan  had  written  more  than 
he  meant  or  Madeleine  had  read  more  than  he  put  into  them. 
Anyway,  this  afternoon,  she  saw  his  letters  as  shams — as  the 
rock  upon  which  he  tried  his  soul,  upon  which  he  carved  the 
path  to  self-expression.  He  wasn't  in  the  least  glad  to  see 
her  again;  he  didn't  care  enough  even  to  pretend  he  was  glad. 
He  only  thought  of  her  as  a  person  he  had  known  all  his  life, 
as  a  person  to  write  to,  as  a  person  to  write  to  him.  Words, 
words,  words!  He  cared,  properly,  for  nothing  else  at  all. 
Then  Roberta's  pretty  face  got  in  the  way,  and  she  wasn't  sure 
even  of  that. 

And  it  was  of  Roberta  that  Jan,  coming  back  with  the 
aspirin,  began  to  talk.  Roberta,  he  told  Allan,  was  a  "peach" — 
that  her  companion,  lucky  dog,  had  "picked  her  up"  down 
there  on  the  towing-path.  "Picked  her  up,  my  boy.  Ab-so- 
bally-lutely." 

But  the  exquisite  humour  of  the  situation  did  not,  somehow, 
reveal  itself  to  Allan. 

"He  told  you  that,  did  he?"  he  growled,  and  sat  there  in 
his  gloom  while  Jan  went  on  with  the  story.  When  she 
thought  it  had  gone  far  enough  Guen  interposed. 

"She's  like  someone  I've  met  or  have  seen  somewhere,"  she 
said.  "Her  face  was  oddly  familiar.  Was  it  to  you,  Allan?" 

Jan  chortled. 

"Rather  not,"  he  said.  "You  know  Allan  never  looks  at  a 
girl." 

Allan  got  up  as  though  the  subject  bored  him. 

"I'm  going  to  wash,"  he  told  them. 

"I  should,  old  chap,"  said  Jan.  "You  need  it.  You've  a 
black  smudge  on  your  nose  you'd  look  better  without." 

Then  Guen  remembered. 

"Got  it!"  she  said.  "You'll  find  that  girl's  face  on  Kilmer 
Roydon's  tube  advertisements.  I  suppose  she's  what's  known 
as  a  photographer's  model." 

They  all  knew  Roydon,  of  course.  He  was  the  man  people 
went  to  for  a  photograph,  and  who  presented  them  eventually 
with  a  beautiful  picture. 

"Lord,  yes!"  said  Jan,  who  looked  at  the  photographs  on 
tubes. 


20  INTRUSION 

Allan,  who  did  not,  scowled  at  his  face  in  the  glass  and  tools 
himself  off.  A  moment  or  so  later  Guen  followed,  ostensibly 
to  change  her  frock.  Jan  whistled. 

"Paying  out  funeral  money  hasn't  been  good  for  Allan's 
little  temper,"  he  observed,  and  turned  to  talk  to  Madeleine 
who  looked,  he  thought,  remarkably  "off  colour"  this  after- 
noon. Not  that  Jan  admired  Madeleine  much  at  any  time. 
He  had  never  been  able  to  see  what  Guen  and  Allan  saw 
in  her,  for  Madeleine,  with  her  broad  white  brow,  her  darkly 
earnest  eyes  and  pale,  delicate  face,  was  not  a  type  that 
appealed  to  Jan;  and  always  her  little  air  of  quietness  stood 
like  a  stout  wall  between  them.  There  were  other  things, 
too.  .  .  .  Their  natural  antipathy  was  deepened  and  strength- 
ened by  Jan's  knowledge  that  Madeleine  "saw  through"  him 
and  by  her  knowledge,  extraordinarily  irritating,  that  no  one 
else  did.  Not  even  Guen,  though  she  had  seen  something, 
of  course,  a  good  deal  more  than  the  rest  of  his  adoring  family, 
who  saw  him  for  what,  superficially,  he  was — a  delightful 
creature,  handsome,  affable,  affectionate.  And  kind — not  only 
to  people,  but  to  animals,  who  adored  him.  At  Highgate 
all  the  dogs  of  the  neighbourhood  had  known  him,  and  all 
the  cats.  She  remembered  the  cats,  especially,  how  they  would 
run,  purring,  along  the  front-garden  railings  to  have  their 
heads  rubbed.  It  was  a  queer  world.  .  .  . 

But  because  these  reflections  came  between  her  and  her 
attempts  at  conversation,  she  was  glad  when  Jan  rose  and 
went  out  to  give  Leader  a  run  before  dinner.  Left  to  her 
own  thoughts  she  found  that  they  were  neither  very  interesting 
nor  profitable,  though  outrageously  persistent,  and  she  wished 
fervently  that  she  could  find  some  excuse  for  escaping  the 
evening's  lecture  in  that  stuffy  room  in  the  Tottenham  Court 
Road.  But  there  the  aspirin  had  cut  the  ground  from  under 
her  feet,  for  by  this  time  everybody  knew  that  the  English 
variety  could  be  depended  upon.  It  was  of  no  use  at  all  to 
pretend  that  it  didn't  do  you  any  good. 

Suddenly  the  door  burst  open  and  a  young  girl,  hatted  and 
cloaked,  came  into  the  room. 

"Hallo,  Caryl!"  said  Madeleine. 

Caryl  came  forward,  threw  both  arms  round  Madeleine's 
neck  and  kissed  her. 

"How  perfectly  lovely  to  see  you  again!"  she  cried.  "And, 
oh,  Mad,  I've  had  the  most  heavenly  week-end." 


INTRUSION 


When  she  had  thrown  off  her  hat  and  seated  herself  beside 
Madeleine  you  saw  with  a  start  how  like  she  was  to  Guen. 
There  was  the  same  brown-tinted  skin,  the  same  short-lidded 
brown  eyes,  the  same  brown  straight  hair  worn  short,  but  with 
a  line  of  fringe  as  straight  as  the  rest  of  it.  Perhaps  it  struck 
you  that  everything  about  Caryl  was  "straight" — not  only 
her  hair,  but  the  slight  boyish  figure  and  the  glance  she  gave 
you  from  her  short-lidded  eyes.  She  was,  moreover,  one  of  the 
few  girls  who  look  "right"  with  short  hair,  perhaps  because 
it  was  not  contradicted,  as  it  is  in  so  many  women,  by  her 
figure.  Her  sex  did  not  flaunt  itself  in  physical  curves  or  in 
feminine  tricks.  She  was  supremely  unselfconscious. 

But  though  the  likeness  between  Caryl .  and  Guen  was  so 
strong  that  it  startled  you  sometimes  to  see  them  together, 
there  was  a  note  about  Caryl  that  Guen  had  not;  the  eager, 
passionate  note  that  showed  in  the  way  she  talked  and  listened, 
and  in  the  way  she  walked— quickly,  with  head  thrown  back 
and  lips  slightly  apart.  She  was  decidedly  not  beautiful. 
No  one  even  would  have  called  her  "pretty,"  but  for  most 
people  she  had  an  instantaneous  attraction  none  the  less  real 
because  it  was  difficult  to  give  it  a  name. 

"You  don't  look  a  bit  well,  you  know,"  she  told  Madeleine. 
"I  believe  that  horrid  Osenton  creature  gives  you  too  much 
work  to  do.  I  think  you  ought  to  leave." 

"Rubbish,  my  dear,"  said  Madeleine.  "I'm  all  right.  My 
pale  face  doesn't  mean  anything." 

"Oh,  I  know  colour  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  it.  It  isn't 
that.  But  you  look  so  tired — tired  right  through !" 

Madeleine  laughed. 

"I  believe,  you  know,"  she  said,  "that  I've  merely  got  the 
hump." 

"You  want  a  holiday." 

"My  dear,  I  want  so  many  things  .  .  .  and  I'm  not  going 
to  have  one  of  them." 

"You  won't  want  them  presently." 

"You  mean  I'll  get  tired  of  wanting  them — that  I'll  change 
my  mind?" 

"No,  I  don't.  I  don't  mean  anything  of  the  sort.  I  mean 
that  you'll  learn  to  do  without  them." 

"I* wonder  if  I  shall?" 


22  INTRUSION 

"  'Course.  You're  like  me.  There's  a  spark  somewhere  in 
us  that  never  goes  out  .  .  .  there  isn't  anything  at  all  that  can 
put  it  out." 

"I'm  sure  my  spark's  quite  gone  out." 

"It  hasn't.  It  never  will — till  you're  dead.  Neither  will 
mine.  Both  of  us  are  so  glad,  you  see,  to  be  alive." 

"Lots  of  people  are  that." 

"But  they're  not  like  us.  ...  They  aren't  willing  to  take 
everything  that  comes — the  rough  with  the  smooth.  And  you 
know  we  are.  We're  grateful  for  anything." 

"That  isn't  true  of  me  any  longer,  Caryl.  I'm  not  the 
amiable  person  you  knew  seven  months  ago.  I've  grown  hard 
and  resentful  and  .  .  .  carping.  I  think  that's  the  word. 
And  the  worst  of  it  is  it  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  the  war. 
It's  something  intimate  and  personal — and  the  war  stopped 
being  that  a  long  while  ago.  It's  just  something  I  want  for 
myself  and  shan't  get — ever." 

"How  do  you  know?"  asked  Caryl.  "That's  the  lovely  part. 
You  never  do.  Yon  can't  get  a  lien  on  the  future  quite  like 
that,  you  know." 

Years  ago  someone  Guen  knew  had  made  a  cartoon  of  Caryl 
and  given  it  her.  It  showed  a  queer  elfin  little  creature 
crawling  sideways  out  of  the  stride  of  a  monster  labelled  Woe, 
and  underneath  it  was  written,  "Extraordinary  Convolutions 
of  a  Young  Person  Who  Means  To  Be  Happy."  It  hung  now 
above  Caryl's  dressing-table,  so  that  she  was  reminded  of  her 
goal  every  time  she  brushed  her  hair. 

"What  was  there  specially  nice  about  that  week-end  of 
yours,  Caryl?" 

"Nothing  was  specially  nice.  It  was  all  nice.  There  was 
only  Marjorie  and  Jack  and  Mrs.  Heston  and  a  young  man 
Jack  knew,  named  Merrick,  Richard  Merrick.  He  had  a 
motor-car  and  took  us  all  out.  Not  a  Rolls-Royce,  you  know, 
or  anything  like  that.  Just  a  common  or  garden  sort  of  thing, 
but  still  a  car.  He  exceeded  the  speed  limit  abominably." 

"You're  quite  sure  Mr.  Merrick  wasn't  'specially'  nice?" 

"I  don't  know.  .  .  .  Probably.  ...  I  didn't  think  about 
it.  He  just  fitted  in,  you  know.  Better,  I'm  afraid,  than  we 
fitted  into  his  car.  We  did  look  a  crew!  I  sound,  don't  I, 
like  Matthew  Arnold  criticising  the  Shelley  menage?" 

Caryl  was  not  "literary";  her  penchant  was  mathematical, 


INTRUSION  23 

but  it  was  not  for  nothing  that  she  had  a  booky  brother  and 
sister.  Besides,  as  she  would  have  told  you,  you  can't  hear 
Keats  and  Shelley  talked  about  as  though  they  were  first 
cousins  without  its  having  some  sort  of  an  effect  upon  you. 

"I  suppose  it's  time  I  went  and  washed,"  she  said,  just  as 
Guen  came  in  with  the  sound  of  the  dinner-gong.  Guen  wore 
a  polychromatic  frock  and  a  diminutive  frown,  which  cleared 
as  her  eyes  fell  upon  Caryl. 

"Hallo,  Caryl,"  she  said.  "You  just  arrived?  Had  a  good 
time?" 

"Rather!"  said  Caryl,  collecting  her  belongings.  There  was 
the  usual  hunt  for  gloves,  always  traitorously  inclined,  while 
Guen  explained  that  Allan  had  had  a  wretched  day  at  the 
office  and  that  his  ankle  had  been  very  painful. 

"He'll  be  all  right  soon,  I  expect,"  she  said,  "but,  of  course, 
it  would  happen  to-day!" 

"Why  to-day,  particularly?"  Caryl  wanted  to  know,  and 
then  unexpectedly  read  her  answer  in  Madeleine's  face  in 
which  something  was  stabbing  two  patches  of  brilliant  colour. 
.  .  .  When  Caryl  had  done  thinking  how  nice  Madeleine  looked 
when  she  blushed,  she  reflected  that  love — "that  sort  of  love" — 
was  somehow  connected  for  her  with  poetry  and  scenery, 
which  she  always  tried  to  ignore,  and  with  the  couples  on  the 
Heath,  the  Embraced  and  Embracing,  whom  you  couldn't 
ignore.  .  .  .  Still,  if  Madeleine  was  "in  love"  with  Allan,  it 
was  certainly  a  thousand  pities  that  Allan  was  not  in  love  with 
Madeleine.  Caryl  would  have  liked  Madeleine  for. a  sister.  .  .  . 

"Guen,"  she  said  suddenly,  over  a  pile  of  her  outdoor 
clothes,  "need  I  change?  I  look  quite  nice  underneath  all  this. 
Or  does  that  frock  mean  that  someone's  coming?" 

"Only  'A.G.'  "  said  Guen. 

"Only  'A.G.,' "  said  Caryl,  but  Guen  did  not  turn  a  hair. 

"Hurry  up — you'll  be  late,"  she  said  calmly. 

Caryl  went.  She  was  not  coming  to  the  lecture.  Caryl 
didn't  care  for  lectures  and  besides,  she  had  an  essay  to  write 
upon  the  subject,  "Is  Shelley  greater  as  a  Nature  or  as  a  Love 
Poet?"  It  was  no  subject  for  Caryl  who  didn't  like  poetry, 
knew  nothing  about  love  (of  "that"  sort)  and  never  looked 
at  the  scenery.  She  did  not  shine  at  English.  Ten  to  one 
the  essay  would  come  back  to  her  marked  "Peculiarly  unfeeling. 
Read  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  again." 


24  INTRUSION 

It  was  very  extraordinary,  Caryl  used  to  think,  that  a  girl 
couldn't  take  her  B.A.  without  having  to  wade  through  all 
these  gentleman-poets.  Not  that  the  women  were  any  better, 
except  that  there  were  fewer  of  them.  They  were  a  gloomy  lot. 
Caryl  didn't  care  very  much  for  literary  people.  Most  of 
Guen's  friends  she  voted  tiresome,  and  was  very  glad  it  was 
so  hard  to  get  them  to  come  out  to  the  suburbs,  which  they 
despised.  Her  strictures,  however,  did  not  apply  to  "A.G.," 
who  was  coming  to  dinner  and  going  on  to  Guen's  lecture-affair. 
(Fancy  anybody  electing  to  listen  to  a  lecture!)  Caryl  con- 
sidered that  Antony  Gore,  to  his  friends,  was  a  quite  delight- 
ful person,  not  in  the  least  resembling  that  dull,  high-brow 
journal,  Life  and  Letters,  which  he  edited.  She  wondered,  as 
she  brushed  her  hair,  whether  Guen  really  intended  to  marry 
him.  Here  again  it  was  not  the  problem  of  love  which  interested 
her,  but  only  the  idea  of  Antony  Gore  as  brother-in-law.  A.G., 
so  Caryl  thought,  would  do.  He  had  many  excellent  qualities — 
good  temper  and  humour  and  enthusiasm.  But,  best  of  all,  he 
was  so  completely  unlike  the  things  he  wrote  and  he  wasn't  ever- 
lastingly thrusting  English  literature  down  your  throat.  He 
was  one  of  the  few  "writing"  people  who  seemed  to  know  that 
books  weren't  everything.  Even  Allan  thought  they  were. 
Caryl  could  quite  understand  why  Allan  was  not  in  love  with 
Madeleine.  Properly,  he  hadn't  seen  her  yet.  She  was  only 
a  person  who  liked  books  and  could  talk  and  write  good  letters 
about  them.  .  .  . 

Gore  had  arrived  by  the  time  Caryl  got  downstairs  and  was 
standing  in  the  middle  of  the  hearthrug  listening  to  something 
that  Allan  was  saying  and  which  Guen  kept  interrupting. 
Caryl  liked  the  look  of  A.G.  She  admired  his  sleek  dark  head, 
with  its  well-brushed  hair,  and  thought  that  the  way  in  which 
his  eyes  were  set  back  in  his  head  made  his  brow  look  even 
more  enormous  than  it  really  was.  Good  temper  lurked  in 
the  corners  of  his  mouth  and  decision  in  the  jut  of  his  chin. 
Caryl  noticed  these  things  afresh  about  him  to-night,  and  saw 
that  he  had  brought  the  new  number  of  Life  and  Letters,  at 
which  Madeleine  sat  looking.  It  was,  she  knew,  to  include  a 
new  poem  of  Allan's  and  a  sketch  of  Guen's,  and  it  was  the 
sketch  she  sat  down  now  to  look  at  over  Madeleine's  shoulder. 
Of  course,  she  hated  it.  She  always  did.  Guen's  work  hurt. 
It  was  full  of  little  pin-pricks  that  got  home  each  time  and 


INTRUSION  25 

nearly  drove  you  mad.  Caryl  glanced  across  at  her  now  and 
wondered  how  she  did  it.  She  looked  kind  and  benevolent 
and  amused.  You'd  never  imagine  she  would  write  like  this. 
But  there  were  several  Guens.  The  Guen  that  stood  there 
now,  listening  with  kind  eyes  to  what  Gore  was  saying,  never 
put  pen  to  paper. 

From  Allan  you  got  what  you  expected.  You  knew  that 
what  Allan  wrote  would  be  full  of  savage  discontent  and  bitter 
contrast,  because  that  was  Allan.  Forever  tilting  at  life,  at 
a  world  he  could  neither  understand  nor  tolerate.  And  the 
war  hadn't  made  him  any  better.  The  poems  Allan  had 
written  from  the  trenches  were  awful.  It  was  like  him  to  call 
them  Roses  and  Rue.  If  she  turned  her  head  the  name  stared 
down  at  her  from  a  slim  green  volume  amongst  its  fellows  on 
the  little  shelf  Anne  Suffield  kept  for  the  "family  works." 

"No  wonder  I'm  not  booky,"  Caryl  thought,  as  she  sat  there 
on  the  arm  of  Madeleine's  chair,  "I'm  a  blooming  reaction, 
that's  what  I  am." 

Also,  she  was  very  hungry  and  was  glad  when  the  dinner- 
gong  cut  what  A.G.  was  saying  in  half  and  they  all  trooped 
in  to  dinner. 


To  Madeleine  it  was  a  horrible  affair,  for  she  swallowed  with 
it  the  caviare  of  disappointment.  Allan  and  his  headache  sat 
at  her  side,  talking  very  little  about  anything.  Jan,  on  the 
other  hand,  talked  to  everybody  about  nothing,  and  Guen  and 
Caryl  and  Antony  Gore  talked  to  everybody,  most  unselfishly, 
about  everything.  Mrs.  Suffield  never  "talked."  She  made 
remarks,  more  or  less  intelligent,  but  generally  uncorrelated. 
She  was  deeply  engaged  with  the  ritual  of  dinner  and  in  being 
proud  of  her  children.  She  thought  how  gay  Caryl  was  after 
her  week-end,  and  what  a  pity  it  was  Jan  would  have  to  go 
back  without  seeing  his  father;  and  how  nice  Guen  looked  in 
her  new  frock,  and  how  unlike  her  idea  of  an  editor  that  nice 
Mr.  Gore  was  to  be  sure,  and  what  a  pity  it  was  Allan's  head 
was  so  bad. 

But  Madeleine  sat  there  like  one  in  a  dream  and  with  a 
strange  pain  in  her  heart.  Madeleine  was  only  twenty-four, 
but  this  evening  she  felt  old — old  with  the  suffering  of  all  the 


26  INTRUSION 

women  who  have  ever  loved.  And  while  the  meal  went  on — 
and  the  talk  and  Allan's  silence — she  sat  there  with  that  pain 
in  her  heart  that  never  stopped. 

For  she  did  not  want  to  suffer.  And  she  resented  bitterly 
that  she  should  suffer  through  love.  Love  was  not  the  only 
thing  in  life.  Life  was  packed  full  of  wonder  and  interest. 
Caryl  was  right  there,  at  least.  You  wished  you  could  believe 
she  was  right  altogether,  for  it  was  absurd  anyone  should  feel 
like  this  about  one  little  bit  of  life.  Throughout  Anne  Suffield's 
carefully-cooked  meal  these  were  the  things  Madeleine  Hervey 
thought  of.  She  longed  with  all  the  passion  of  youth  and  all 
the  fury  of  pain  for  a  world  in  which  men  were  not,  or  for  a 
return  of  that  blessed  time  when  no  man  had  disturbed  her 
peace,  when  she  looked  qn  them  with  indifferent  eyes,  talking 
her  glib  rubbish  about  "friendship.  .  .  ." 


Of  the  evening's  lecture  she  remembered  little  beyond  the 
fact  that  the  young  poet  who  was  alleged  to  be  the  subject  of 
it  had  married  a  Greek  lady  and  had  not  deserted  her.  She 
couldn't  very  well  have  missed  that  because  the  lecturer 
repeated  it  three  times,  as  though  it  was  a  fact  he  wished  above 
all  to  impress  upon  you.  But  personalia  did  not  interest 
Madeleine.  The  research  work  she  did  for  Mr.  Osenton  (and 
her  living)  had  sickened  her  for  it.  She  remained  one  of  those 
beautifully  rare  people  who  can  be  content  to  know  a  man  or 
woman's  work  without  wishing  to  pick  over  the  rags  of  their 
private  lives.  Moreover,  this  little  group  of  young  men  who 
called  themselves  the  Poetry  Circle,  and  under  whose  auspices 
the  lecture  had  been  given,  irritated  her  quite  alarmingly. 
They  were  clever  young  men  with  a  determination  to  be  heard — 
a  laudable  object  they  had  many  ways  of  achieving.  Their 
verse  was  essentially  and  startlingly  modern,  never  quite  so 
good  as  they  imagined  nor  as  bad  as  those  alleged  who  didn't 
approve  of  it — or  of  them.  In  it  either  the  old  technique  died 
a  painful  death  or  a  new  "one  came  to  even  more  painful 
birth.  The  writers  of  it  cared,  as  a  Society,  so  little  for  the 
poetic  traditions  that  even  those  among  them  whose  knowledge 
of  technique  was  beyond  dispute,  preferred  to  copy  out  their 
carefully-written  sonnets  into  the  vers  libre  form,  or  lack  of 


INTRUSION  27 

form.  When  you  got  used  to  the  new  method  (and  you  were 
apt,  at  first,  to  find  it  very  disturbing)  you  began  to  notice  a 
number  of  other  things  about  these  productions  of  this  little 
group.  These  poems,  coloured,  imagistic,  drenched  in  a 
sort  of  violent,  primal  beauty,  were  yet  protests  against  the 
older  canons  of  art — against  the  deliberate  shutting  up  of 
art  to  anything  that  was  not  ordinarily  "beautiful."  They 
gave  you  life  raw,  jagged  and  bloody,  as  they  gave  you  the 
war  and  the  base  hospitals,  so  that  you  couldn't  help  feeling 
that  they  agreed  with  Matthew  Arnold's  dictum  that  poetry 
should  be  at  bottom  a  "criticism  of  life,"  even  though  they 
spent  much  time  in  wondering,  privately  and  publicly,  why 
that  misguided  gentleman  ever  tried  to  write  poetry!  They 
struggled  frantically,  these  young  men,  in  an  inarticulate 
effort  to  be  articulate;  none  of  the  violent,  impatient  things 
they  saw  and  felt  and  believed  would  fit  at  all  into  the  old 
forms  and  "poetic  diction"  that  had  done  for  the  "old  buf- 
fers" like  Tennyson  and  Wordsworth  and  Arnold,  whom  they 
derided  in  public.  It  was  their  own  phrase:  they  wrote  news- 
paper articles  which  justified  it  and  poems  which  didn't.  But 
none  of  them  ever  made  the  mistake  of  including  Keats  among 
the  "old  buffers"  whose  methods  they  scorned,  for  always,  and 
in  spite  of  themselves,  they  remembered  that  Keats  was  a 
Greek!  Allied  with  their  contempt  of  older  methods  was  a 
love  of  queer  words  and  of  the  extraordinary  adjective  that 
had  never  qualified  that  particular  noun  before,  and  looked 
as  though  it  did  not  like  doing  it  even  now. 

They  had  their  faults — glaring  even  to  the  people  who  had 
no  quarrel  with  their  modernity  and  didn't  really  mind  their 
manners.  They  used  the  phrase  "professional  poet"  a  good 
deal  too  frequently  and  they  showed  an  unhealthily  snobbish 
tendency  to  make  of  poetry  a  fashionable  occupation.  They 
laboured,  most  of  them,  under  a  really  painful  delusion  that 
they  could  read  verse  aloud  extremely  well  (their  own,  of 
course,  because  they  did  not  believe  in  reading  other  people's), 
and  they  suffered,  like  Wordsworth,  from  a  faulty  sense  of 
humour  and  a  thoroughly  uncritical  faculty  in  relation  to  their 
own  productions,  so  that,  like  Wordsworth  again,  they  thought 
all  their  work  was  equally  good,  whereas  (unlike  his)  it  was 
often  merely  equally  bad. 

Guen,    at    least,    had    another    thing    against    them.     You 


28  INTRUSION 

wouldn't  have  gathered  from  their  membership  list,  from  their 
conversation  or  from  their  annual  anthology,  that  there  were 
any  women  poets  at  all.  There  weren't  many  of  them,  it  is 
true,  but  there  were  some,  and  Guen  couldn't  help  feeling  they 
ought  to  have  made  an  effort  to  find  them. 

Allan  believed  that  he  detested  literary  people — that  if  he 
admired  anyone  it  was  the  little  clerk  who  went  home  and 
tended  his  garden,  and  saw  nothing  either  in  words  or  fame. 
He  resented  the  fact  that  he  did  not  care  for  gardening — 
that  he  invariably  pulled  the  wrong  things  up — and  that 
clerking  produced  in  him  a  mental  and  spiritual  atrophy. 

After  the  lecture  Guen  went  on  with  Gore  to  his  room  in 
Bloomsbury,  where  they  would  sit  with  a  lot  of  other  people 
and  talk  "shop"  and  drink  coffee.  These  things  to-night 
did  not  appeal  to  Allan  or  Madeleine,  so  they  took  themselves 
off,  and  burrowing  into  the  tube,  got  down  to  Kensington, 
Outside  Barker's  they  climbed  on  to  a  Twickenham  bus  and 
sat  together  on  the  front  seat.  The  night  was  beautiful. 
There  was  no  wind  at  all:  nothing  but  a  large  white  moon, 
and  silence. 

Night  had  come,  peaceful,  large,  indifferent.  And  Madeleine 
hated  herself  because  beneath  night's  calm  and  quiet  the  wings 
of  her  spirit  beat  furiously. 

"Cold?"  Allan  asked  her  presently. 

She  said  no,  but  he  felt  her  shiver  against  his  arm.  He  had 
an  instinct  to  put  the  mackintosh  cover  more  closely  about 
her,  but  he  left  it  as  it  was.  The  bus  ran  out  of  Kensington 
into  Kensington's  anti-climax,  the  Hammersmith  Road,  and 
Allan  sat  there  glaring  down  upon  it  out  of  his  tangled  mood. 
He  could  not  understand  why  Madeleine's  coming  should  have 
dispelled  the  glamour,  that,  for  the  last  few  months,  had 
belonged  to  every  thought  of  her.  He  saw  her  now  as  the 
link  she  had  always  been  with  the  things  he  cared  for,  as  a 
reinforcement  of  his  own  beliefs  and  ideals.  The  brief  glamour 
was  gone.  He  felt  now  no  stir  of  the  blood,  no  beating  of 
the  pulse:  he  wanted  just  nothing  at  all  of  her  but  the  old 
"sisterly  sweet  hand-in-hand."  Allan  knew  nothing  of  women; 
none  of  the  casual,  fragmentary  encounters  that  come  to  most 
young  men  of  his  age  had  been  his:  he  had  been  bound 
by  not  so  much  as  the  lightest  of  kisses,  and  he  had  no  way 
of  discovering  how  much  of  that  "glamour"  had  got  into 


INTRUSION  29 

his  letters — how  much  of  it  had  reached  Madeleine.  But, 
at  least,  he  understood  that  something  had  happened  to  his 
friendship  with  Madeleine,  that  if  he  wanted  to  keep  it  he 
would  have  to  fight.  And  he  wasn't  going  to  fight.  At  least 
he  was  clear  about  that.  Like  most  young  men  in  October, 
nineteen-eighteen,  he  was  tired  of  fighting.  So  he  sat  there 
saying  nothing  until,  at  Hammersmith  Broadway,  Madeleine's 
voice — cold,  incisive,  like  the  night — broke  the  silence. 

"I'm  rather  chilly.    I  think  I'll  go  inside." 

He  let  her  go — did  not  offer  to  accompany  her.  Perhaps  he 
knew  she  hoped  he  would  not.  His  face  was  set  and  frowning : 
his  chin  dug  deeply  into  his  turned-up  collar.  He  looked 
neither  attractive  nor  amiable — and  was  not. 

And,  there,  inside  a  crowded  bus,  with  several  strap-hangers 
blocking  her  mercifully  from  the  public  gaze,  Madeleine  had 
liberty  to  look  as  miserable  as  she  felt.  There  was  a  certain 
amount  of  relief,  she  discovered,  just  in  being  able  to  do  that. 
But  it  was  the  last  time.  Misery  was  a  luxury — not  a  thing 
you  cherished — made  a  memory  of.  She  was  only  thankful 
that  here  and  now  she  could  see  that  the  thing  was  over — • 
that  at  last  she  knew  where  she  was.  To-morrow  she  would 
go  back  again  to  the  Osentons  at  Sea  View,  in  the  north-east 
corner  of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Joliffe  would  meet  her  at  Ryde 
and  drive  her  in,  because  the  boat  service  was  suspended 
during  the  war  and,  in  any  case,  only  ran  in  summer.  And 
at  Sea  View  would  be  Mrs.  Osenton  with  something  hot 
after  her  long  drive,  and  dinner  put  back  to  give  her  time  to 
change  and  rest.  And  in  her  room  a  fire  and  flowers  and  a 
new  book  somebody  was  feeling  enthusiastic  about.  And 
there  would  be  busy  mornings  at  work;  the  walks  along  the 
sand  in  the  afternoon  with  Mrs.  Osenton  and  the  children 
and  Gyp,  the  new  puppy.  And  energetic  days  when  they  would 
walk  into  Ryde  and  have  tea,  or  into  St.  Helens,  where  you 
would  not  get  tea,  but  only  a  laugh  at  the  notice  board  which 
warned  you  against  bathing  without  a  decent  costume! 
Nothing  more  exciting  than  that.  Good,  plain,  healthful,  use- 
ful days — which  had  been  so  happy.  .  .  .  The  Osenton 
regime  held  no  elements  of  tragedy  or  comedy.  Madeleine 
had  worked  for  John  Osenton  since  she  was  a  girl  of  seventeen 
with  her  hair  down  her  back.  She  knew  exactly  what  he 
wanted  and  how  he  liked  it  done.  John  Osenton  was  forty- 


30  INTRUSION 

five;  his  wife  six  or  seven  years  younger,  and  they  were 
devoted  to  each  other.  Nothing  troubled  the  peace  of  their 
home  save  the  fear  that  some  day  Madeleine  would  get  married 
and  leave  them.  In  their  hearts  they  were  terribly  afraid  of 
this  "somebody"  with  whom  she  corresponded.  With  so  very- 
much  smoke,  surely  there  must  be  a  tiny  flame,  at  least.  .  .  . 
There,  suddenly  beneath  her  veil  of  misery,  Madeleine 
shut  her  heart  up  tightly  to  woe,  striving  to  see  nothing  but 
the  loving  kindness  of  these  people  who  were  fond  of  her  and 
appreciated  the  work  she  did.  There  was  nothing  there  on 
the  future  for  her  but  that  and  the  things  which  she  associated 
with  it — the  sea,  the  long  stretch  of  sand,  and  bathing  on  warm 
days,  decently,  from  the  Osentons'  tent:  the  sweetness  and 
freshness  of  the  simple  things  of  life  which  she  remembered, 
here  in  this  crowded  bus,  with  a  little  pang  that  was  half  joy 
and  half  pain.  Caryl  was  right.  There  wasn't  anything  in  the 
world  which  could  take  your  happiness  from  you  unless  you 
chose  to  let  it.  And  love  wasn't  all,  but  only  a  little  bit  of 
life.  In  spite  of  all  the  poets  and  novelists  that  ever  were,  that 
was  true.  You  had  to  remember  it  when,  with  knit  brows, 
love  passed  you  by. 


CHAPTER    THREE 


THE  Suffields  were  an  affectionate  family  yet  with  a 
strong  tendency  to  split  up  naturally  into  groups  of 
two.  There  were  Jan  and  Penelope,  Guen  and  Allan, 
and  John  and  Anne  Suffield,  who,  as  the  parents,  held  the  fort 
between  them  from  the  fierce  onslaught  of  the  modernity  of 
their  children.  And  there  was  Caryl,  with  a  foot  in  both  camps 
and  an  encouraging  hand  held  out  to  the  fort.  .  .  . 

Jan  and  Pen  were  twins,  so  that,  in  a  measure  at  least,  their 
affinity  had  a  natural  basis.  But,  also,  it  had  another,  because 
Pen  happened  to  be  the  type  of  girl  Jan  most  appreciated. 
Penelope  Suffield  was  neat,  in  mind  and  features;  running, 
like  her  mother  before  her,  to  plumpness  and  platitude,  but 
always  ready  to  do  the  dull  domestic  things  for  you  that  it 
bored  you  to  do  for  yourself,  and  always  to  be  placated  with  a 
seat  at  some  revue  or  musical  comedy  if  things  went  wrong. 
In  nineteen-sixteen  Pen  had  married  Tom  Warren,  with  the 
proviso  of  "no  babies  till  after  the  war";  but  even  Tom 
Warren  had  grown  tired  of  waiting  for  a  thing  so  vague  as 
the  end  of  the  war,  which  explains,  perhaps,  why  Pen  was 
expecting  a  baby  in  the  New  Year.  Pen  was  ridiculous  about 
babies.  .  .  .  That  always  was  how  she  put  it,  "babies"  not 
"children" — helpless  little  animals  in  long-clothes  at  the  stage 
at  which  Mrs.  Suffield  (most  excellent  and  old-fashioned  of 
mothers)  had  found  her  children  the  most  trying  and  least 
prepossessing.  "Oh,  I  love  'em,"  Pen  would  say.  "I  love  'em 
so  much,  I  could  eat  'em." 

In  her  queer  fastidious  fashion  Guen  was  revolted,  somehow, 
by  this  outrageous  suggestion  that  a  child  was  a  lollipop.  Yet 
she  knew  that,  after  all,  babies  in  war  time  were  all  right  if 
you  were  like  Pen — who  had  been  born  without  imagination 
and  never  worried;  and  if  you  took  care  to  have  a  husband 
whose  factory  was  deemed  of  National  Importance,  and  if 


32  INTRUSION 

you  moved  out  of  the  air-raid  zone.  Tom  insisted  on  that; 
but  even  the  air  raids  wouldn't  have  put  Pen  "off."  Looking 
after  Tom  and  having  babies  and  being  inordinately  proud  of 
her  twin  in  khaki  was  now  Pen's  business  in  life.  Jan,  sniffing 
prospectively  at  the  babies,  thought  it  sounded  dull;  but  it 
wasn't  Pen  who  would  find  fault  with  it — war  or  no  war. 

And,  on  the  whole,  the  Suffields  had  had  remarkable  luck 
over  the  war. 


John  Suffield,  of  course,  didn't  count.  He  was  fifty-five 
when  the  war  began  and  was  out  of  things  from  the  start.  He 
remained  out  of  it  even  when  Parliament  had  done  its  worst, 
but  he  had  the  belligerent  tendencies  of  his  age  and  class,  and 
the  sight  of  him  poring  over  maps  and  his  newspaper  used, 
in  the  early  days,  to  irritate  Allan  beyond  all  bearing.  "As 
though  the  war  has  justified  itself,"  he  said  bitterly  to  Guen, 
"if  it  helps  him  to  rub  up  his  geography." 

But  it  wasn't  only  that  John  Suffield  was  out  of  it  and 
Pen's  Tom,  with  his  factory  of  National  Importance  and  his 
new  duties  as  a  "Special"  (which,  in  his  honester  moments, 
he  confessed  he  preferred  to  those  of  a  soldier).  Always  there 
remained  the  extraordinary  luck  of  Jan  and  Allan.  It  surprised 
you  afresh  every  time  you  thought  of  it. 

Jan  (who  had  been  christened  Arthur  Jannison)  had,  of 
course,  attested  under  the  Derby  scheme,  and  (in  his  honest 
moments,  less  frequent,  perhaps,  than  Tom's  and  less  honest) 
he  would  have  told  you  that  though  he  was  inordinately  glad 
to  wear  the  sign  of  attestation  on  his  arm  because  it  saved  so 
much  unpleasantness,  he  did  not  in  the  very  least  want  to 
join  the  Army.  The  Army — and  here  he  would  have  been 
perfectly  frank — did  not  accord  with  his  temperament,  and  it 
was  for  Jan  a  stroke  of  extraordinary  good  luck  that  his  father's 
firm,  as  well  as  Tom's  factory,  was  deemed  of  "National 
Importance,"  for  Jan  had  been  made  a  junior  member  of  the 
firm  of  Linton  and  Suffield  (now  Linton,  Suffield  and  Co.) 
and,  in  his  peregrinations  on  the  firm's  behalf,  had  already 
revealed  a  prodigious  faculty  for  extracting  orders  from  a 
granite  block.  Later,  when  the  firm  would  do  no  more  for 
him,  his  unexpected  "B"  category  had  secured  for  him  a  post 


INTRUSION  33 

as  Equipment  Officer  in  the  Flying  Corps.  "B"  category  was 
explained  by  a  "murmuring"  heart,  which  troubled  everybody 
very  much  except  its  owner  and  Guen — both  of  whom  were 
apt  to  be  scornful  of  doctors  and  never  really  believed  in  it. 

But  Jan  did  very  well  as  an  Equipment  Officer  and  early 
revealed  himself  as  one  of  the  few  square  pegs  the  War  Office 
really  had  fixed  up  with  a  square  hole.  Also  the  hole  was 
continually  dug  anew  and  elsewhere,  so  that  for  Jan  life  was 
perpetually  a  thing  of  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new.  More 
than  that,  he  became  presently  as  clever  at  obtaining  leave 
as  he  had  been  at  obtaining  orders,  and  though  life  in  the 
army  was  not  the  life  Jan  would  have  chosen,  he  would  have 
been  the  first  to  admit  that,  all  things  considered,  he  had  not 
done  badly,  thanks  in  particular  to  that  unsuspected  "murmur- 
ing heart."  Jan  was  glad  he  wouldn't  have  to  fight.  You 
can't  put  up  a  good  fight,  so  some  placard  or  other  has  told 
us,  "unless  your  blood  boils."  And  Jan's  never  did.  His 
thinking  apparatus  never  reached  sufficiently  high  pressure  for 
that.  Jan  liked  being  alive  and  he  could  not  spare  time  to 
hate  anybody — even  a  German.  "Live  and  let  live"  was 
his  motto,  and  to  him  all  others  would  have  been  hideously 
disturbing. 

To  Allan,  however,  luck  had  been  less  kind — had  given  him 
no  heart  that  murmured  but  only  a  temperament  that  hated 
war  and  a  conscience  that  would  not  let  him  stand  aside.  He 
could  not  have  borne,  like  Jan,  to  have  found  a  square  hole  of 
comfort.  If  Jan's  temperament  was  one  that  accorded  ill 
with  the  Army  and  the  things  the  Army  required  you  to  do, 
these  were  facts  ten  times  more  true  of  Allan's.  There  were 
few  things,  on  the  whole  perhaps,  that  Allan's  "temperament" 
did  accord  with.  It  wasn't  only  the  war  that  had  revealed 
him  as  a  square  peg  in  a  round  hole.  Somehow,  he  had  always 
been  that.  He  loved  life  so  much  that  it  hurt — its  beauty,  its 
pathos,  its  futility  and  stupidity.  Life  never  was  but  eternally 
about  to  be — something  inexpressible.  Always,  in  its  essence, 
life  slipped  through  his  fingers.  He  loved  form,  and  was  but 
an  indifferent  draughtsman:  colour,  and  had  no  skill  with 
paint:  poetry  and  the  music  of  words,  and  was  only  a  "minor" 
poet  with  little  hope  of  growing  the  wings  of  a  "major."  The 
only  figures  he  cared  about  were  figures  of  speech — and  he 
was  a  clerk  in  the  Comet  Insurance  Company. 


34  INTRUSION 


At  seventeen,  "drawing  the  line  at  engines,  anyhow,"  Allan 
had  chosen  the  Comet  instead  of  "the  firm,"  as,  six  months 
before,  Maurice  Linton  had  chosen  art.  Maurice,  in  John 
Suffield's  opinion,  was  "at  the  bottom  of  things."  (All  those 
things  about  Allan,  he  meant,  which  he  found  it  difficult  to 
associate  with  any  son  of  his.)  Maurice  Linton  had  "ideas," 
and  "ideas"  in  a  young  man  were  always  dangerous,  especially 
if  they  centred  round  art  and  literature  which,  as  everybody 
knew,  took  you  nowhere.  At  seventeen,  however,  art  (or  his 
love  of  it)  had  taken  Maurice  to  the  Slade,  whilst  Allan  got 
through  his  "matric"  and  was  profoundly  bored  by  the  pros- 
pect of  the  business  career  which  he  saw  lying  in  wait  for  him 
round  the  corner.  At  seventeen,  during  these  last  few  months 
at  school,  Allan  had  seen  life  rather  as  one  unending  visit 
to  the  library,  with  quiet  intervals  for  reading  the  volumes 
one  secured  or  for  snaring  impressions  and  thoughts  on  to 
paper,  with  book-talk  walks  in  the  company  of  Guen  or  Made- 
leine on  the  Heath,  or  up  in  the  tiny  room  Maurice  called  his 
"studio."  Each  of  the  four  pitched  life  by  the  same  keynote; 
somewhere  there  was  an  invisible  thread,  holding  them  together. 

In  a  way,  and  earlier,  John  Suffield  had  been  proud  of  these 
two  children  of  his.  "Our  two  bookworms — guaranteed  harm- 
less," he  would  say  of  them  to  visitors,  but  as  they  grew  older 
this  was  an  opinion  he  tended  to  modify — at  least  as  far  as 
Allan  was  concerned.  For  Allan,  being  a  boy,  would  have 
his  living  to  earn.  His  itch  for  scribbling,  tolerable  in  a  school- 
boy, was  a  good  deal  less  so  in  a  young  man  about  to  take 
his  place  in  the  world.  It  was  time,  so  he  thought,  that  Allan 
concentrated  on  the  "things  that  mattered,"  and  these,  to  John 
Suffield,  had  extraordinarily  little  to  do  with  art  and  literature. 

But  though  there  were  times  when  Allan  was  oppressed  by 
a  sense  of  utter  antipathy  to  his  father  ("glowing,"  as  he 
said  to  Guen,  "with  beef  and  bullion,")  he  had  for  his  mother, 
for  all  she  shared  his  father's  view  of  life,  that  deep  accepting 
love  of  the  boy  for  whom  other  women  do  not  as  yet  exist. 
It  was  for  her  sake  that  he  wished  he  did  not  find  so  hideous 
all  these  things  that  she  and  his  father  believed  so  Important. 
But  hideous  he  certainly  did  find  them.  Looking  beyond  the 
comfort  of  Adelaide  Lodge,  the  house  at  Highgate  which  John 


INTRUSION  35 

Suffield  had  bought  some  ten  years  before,  Allan  saw  all  that 
went  to  produce  it — all  that  was  behind  the  steady,  never- 
failing  family  income:  the  earnest  application  of  one  man 
to  business,  the  sure  but  certain  cutting  out  of  extraneous 
interests;  the  dredging  of  life  of  all  but  "essentials."  Books 
and  art  in  this  world  of  competition  were  luxuries.  You  could 
afford  but  little  of  them.  And  from  such  a  world  Allan's  mind 
jibbed  eternally  away,  just  as  Maurice's  had  done. 

With  Maurice,  however,  it  had  been  different.  For  him 
there  had  been  the  definite  path  with  a  definite  goal,  with 
which  Allan's  vague  idea  of  a  booky  life  was  simply  not  com- 
parable. He  knew  nobody  who  could  help  him,  and  there 
was  the  eternal  example  of  Guen  who,  at  nineteen,  after  two 
years'  steady  effort  had  reached  the  pinnacle  of  fame  proper 
to  the  writer  who  has  had  three  stories  accepted.  Two  years 
later  the  outlook  for  Allan  might  have  been  different,  but  at 
seventeen  there  had  certainly  been  nothing  at  all  but  "the  firm" 
or  the  Comet.  Profoundly  bored  at  this  stage  with  the  present, 
he  had  at  times  a  desperate  dreadful  vision  of  the  future  as 
a  frantic  clutching  at  the  skirts  of  leisure.  And  it  was  leisure 
he  wanted:  leisure  in  which  to  live;  not  money  at  all  or  a 
comfortable  home.  At  twenty  his  contempt  for  money  was 
enormous. 

Guen  thought  he  was  wrong."  Her  contempt  was  not  for 
money  but  for  the  money  standard,  and  she  laughed  at  Allan's 
vague  notions  of  life  in  a  book-lined  cottage  on  nothing  at  all. 
For  Guen  loved  not  only  books,  but  theatres  and  the  London 
streets  and  shops  and  Mudie's  and  picture-galleries.  These 
things  didn't  "go"  with  a  cottage  in  the  wilds  on  nothing  at  all. 

"You  only  think  you'd  like  the  cottage  and  nothing,"  she 
told  Allan,  "because  you  don't  want  to  be  bothered  with  the 
other  side  of  life  to  which  all  these  things  belong.  And  you 
must  be  bothered.  Somehow,  you've  got  to  make  them  fit  in." 
The  trouble  was  that  Allan  had  no  skill  at  all  as  a  joiner  and 
fitter. 

There  was,  too,  the  more  human  question  of  girls.  In  the 
Suffield  household  there  was  a  legend  that  Allan  did  not  really 
know  there  were  any  girls  in  the  world  beside  his  sisters  and 
Madeleine  Hervey.  Occasionally  others  did  swim  into  his 
orbit,  but  it  was  not  exactly  true  to  say  that  Allan  actually 
saw  them.  They  were  just  people  about  whom  he  discovered 


36  INTRUSION 

the  most  extraordinary  things.  Of  one  he  would  say,  "She's 
the  sort  of  girl  who  wears  furs,"  or  "the  sort  of  girl  who 
doesn't,"  and  asked  if  he  remembered  Miss  So-and-So  would 
say,  "Oh,  yes  .  .  .  quite  well.  She  can't  stand  Conrad,"  or 
"She  says  Dickens  bores  her."  "As  though  it  matters  what 
a  girl  reads!"  John  Suffield  would  say  to  his  wife.  Even 
Guen  was  amused — and  Guen  thought,  as  Allan  did,  that  what 
people  read  mattered  tremendously. 

That  was  why  he  and  Guen  drew  together  out  of  the  family 
circle.  Always  between  them  they  had  this  love  of  literature, 
their  sense  of  the  beauty  and  value  of  words,  and  the  itch  for 
scribbling  with  which  both  of  them  had  been  born.  At  twenty 
Allan's  hadn't  taken  him  very  far:  but  Guen,  two  years  his 
senior,  had  already  discovered  Antony  Gore  and  America.  A 
year  later  her  first  novel  appeared  and  fell  like  a  bombshell 
into  the  midst  of  her  family.  No  one  agreed  with  her  point 
of  view  but  Allan,  and  upon  Allan  the  effect  of  the  book  was 
enormous.  In  some  queer  unexpected  fashion  it  seemed  to  co- 
ordinate his  ideas  and  showed  him,  for  the  first  time,  how 
thoroughly  he  and  Guen  agreed  upon  essentials.  They  met, 
here,  not  only  in  the  pleasant  land  of  words,  but  out  beyond 
upon  the  hinterland  of  ideas.  It  was  an  exciting  discovery. 

Guen  Suffield  was,  on  the  whole,  an  extraordinary  young 
woman  for  an  Anne  and  John  Suffield  to  have  had  for  a 
daughter.  Also,  she  was  an  extraordinary  young  woman  to 
have  found  in  the  suburbs.  Gore  had  said  so  from  the  first, 
but  Guen  was  not  to  be  enticed  away  from  them  and  he  grew 
content,  later,  to  leave  her  there,  "studying  the  beasts  in  their 
lair."  By  "the  beasts"  he  meant  the  comfortable  middle 
classes.  You  gathered  he  didn't  like  them  overmuch.  Neither 
did  Guen.  But  her  seemingly  deep  and  instinctive  dislike  of 
this  class  to  which  she  belonged  was  very  disturbing  to  her  father 
until  he  decided  that  what  she  said  meant  nothing,  that  she 
was  merely  "writing."  Even  then  it  savoured  of  disloyalty, 
which  John  Suffield,  class-conscious  and  class-proud,  found  it 
hard  to  forgive.  He  couldn't  see,  he  said,  what  Guen  and 
Allan  were  driving  at.  He  did  not  read  Omar,  and  if  he  had 
would  not  have  shared  that  gentleman's  desire  to  remould  this 
sorry  Scheme  of  Things.  To  John  Suffield  the  world  was,  on 
the  whole,  very  well  as  it  was;  he  was  essentially  the  strong 
sane  man  who  prided  himself  on  "seeing  life  whole,"  though 


INTRUSION  37 

he  saw,  actually,  nothing  whatever  of  it  save  his  own  little 
corner,  which  was  all  he  wanted  to  see.  He  had  the  keen, 
nimble  brain  that,  in  a  world  of  commerce,  commands  success, 
and  he  saw  no  uneasy  connection  between  his  comfortable 
middle-class  existence  and  the  poverty  and  misery  that  sat  like 
a  curse  on  the  world — though  that  was  not,  of  course,  how 
John  Suffield  saw  it.  He  paid  Trade  Union  rates,  he  would 
have  told  you,  and  it  wasn't  his  workmen,  anyway,  who  lived 
in  hovels.  He  believed  that  the  rock  bottom  ambition  of  every- 
body living — for  which  they  would  willingly  give  up  all  other — 
was  to  get  rich.  What  the  malcontents  resented  was  not  capi- 
talism, but  the  simple  fact  that  they  were  not  capitalists. 

"Good  God,  Anne!"  he  said.  "Do  these  children  of  yours 
want  to  turn  the  world  upside  down?" 

They  said  they  did,  and  then,  in  nineteen-fourteen,  the  war 
came  and  did  it  for  them.  But  they  weren't  grateful.  They 
said  the  war  was  no  good  at  all  to  them  .  .  .  that  they 
hated  it. 

"The  war's  only  going  to  turn  things  over.  That's  no  good. 
The  things  that  matter  will  get  shelved:  the  rest'll  just  settle 
down  again — and  people'll  be  too  knocked  about  to  care.  The 
war  won't  settle  anything,  father." 

"It'll  settle  the  Germans,  anyway,"  John  Suffield  had  said. 

But  in  nineteen-fourteen  it  looked  as  though  it  might,  inci- 
dentally, settle  a  good  many  other  people  as  well! 


It  was  Tom  Warren  who  professed  to  regard  the  war  as  an 
opener  of  doors — a  means  of  escape — and  Guen  hated  him  for 
it.  But  especially  she  hated  him  when  he  said  playfully  to 
Allan,  "Well,  you  never  liked  the  office,  did  you,  old  chap? 
This  may  be  a  way  out."  Unfortunately,  however,  Allan  hated 
the  war  even  more  than  he  had  hated  the  Insurance  Office: 
he  hated  it  because  it  was  stupid  and  unnecessary,  and  because 
of  what  it  could  do,  not  to  him,  but  to  other  people.  When 
he  said  that  Guen  knew  he  was  thinking  of  Maurice,  to  whom 
already  things  were  happening — all  the  usual  unpleasant  things 
that  always  happen  to  young  men  who,  in  war  time,  make  the 
mistake  of  taking  the  New  Testament  too  literally.  The  sight 
of  Maurice,  who  never  went  to  church  and  to  whom  the  bishops 


38  INTRUSION 

were  anathema,  taking  his  stand,  these  days,  by  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  was  a  fit  sight,  Allan  said,  for  tears.  Certainly 
there  were  times  when  he  nearly  came  to  them.  Allan  agreed 
that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  was  the  finest  moral  code 
extant — which  was  the  very  reason  why  he  would  not  have 
attempted  to  act  upon  it.  No  modern  system  run  on  the  lines 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  would  last  ten  hours,  war  or  no 
war;  and  individuals  who  tried  it  would  find  themselves  in 
prison,  or  a  lunatic  asylum,  in  far  less  time  than  that.  And 
prison  was  just  where  Maurice  eventually  did  find  himself. 
That,  said  John  Suffield  darkly,  was  what  ideas  did  for  you ! 

Allan's  ideas,  however,  took  him  (and  earlier,  in  nineteen- 
fifteen)   into  the  Army  as  a  private.     He  went  off  to  camp, 
taking  with  him  the  memory  of  Madeleine's  pale  face  and  the 
look  of  the  Spaniards  Road,  white  and  hard  beneath  the  Feb- 
ruary moon.     Taking  something  else,  too,  that  hurt  more  and 
lasted  longer — the  sound  of  Maurice  Linton's  voice  as  he  had 
shaken  his  hand  and  wished  him  luck.     And  what  it  had  said. 
"I'm  going  on,  old  chap — in  the  opposite  direction." 
And  Allan  had  known,  somehow,  that  the  road  was  darker 
even  than  his  own. 


In  the  following  November  Allan  had  gone  out  to  France — 
just  a  week  after  Madeleine's  brother  Reg  had  been  killed  at 
Ctesiphon.  It  was  a  miserable  time.  One  would  not  talk  of 
it  at  all  if  Allan  had  not,  miraculously,  lived  through  it,  and 
if  it  did  not  happen  that  the  attitude  of  people  to  the  war  was, 
in  some  sense  at  least,  their  attitude  to  everything  else. 

Allan  was  never  one  of  those  people  who  talked  of  the  justice 
or  righteousness  of  the  war.  (These  were  not  terms  he  would 
have  applied  to  any  war.)  But  he  did  want  to  help  to  get 
it  over.  His  quarrel  with  Maurice's  position  was  that  if  you 
objected  to  war  you  must  also  object  (when  there  was  no  war) 
to  all  the  things  that  went  to  produce  it.  You  ought,  at  least, 
to  have  done  something  to  stop  the  Juggernaut.  And  most 
people  had  done  nothing  of  the  sort.  Maurice  himself  had 
done  nothing — beyond  cutting  himself  off  from  his  life  of 
inherited  comfort  and  going  to  live  in  a  garret  with  a  paint 
box.  It  wasn't  the  same  thing  as  fighting,  of  course,  but  then 


INTRUSION  39 

Maurice  had  never  pretended  it  was.  At  least  in  the  garret 
one  could  think,  and  the  desire  to  fight  might  come  later  when 
one  could  fight,  perhaps,  to  some  purpose.  .  .  .  But  Allan 
hadn't  even  cut  himself  off:  he  had  betaken  himself  not  to  a 
garret,  but  down  to  the  street  of  commerce.  He  had  "accepted" 
things.  To  the  same  degree  he  "accepted"  the  war  ajid  to  the 
same  degree  he  hated  it. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  Guen  agreed  with  him  that  she  found 
the  courage  to  finish  her  new  book,  though  she  felt  like  Jane 
Austen  writing  her  quiet  novels  amid  the  turmoil  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars.  .  .  .  Wrapped  in  her  armour-plate  deter- 
mination to  think  of  the  war  as  little  as  possible,  Caryl  worked 
steadily  for  her  "matric,"  her  mind  on  a  "first."  She  never 
mentioned  the  war  and  never  seemed  to  listen  to  others  who 
did;  but  that  proved  nothing,  and  there  were  mornings  when 
Caryl  came  down  to  breakfast  with  tell-tale  eyes.  For  all 
that,  she  secured  her  "first."  The  summer  of  nineteen-sixteen 
was  a  difficult  time.  With  Jan  still  going  to  and  fro  on  his 
father's  business,  it  was  all  hideously  like  the  old  familiar  life, 
save  that  it  was  punctuated  with  Allan's  letters  which  (like 
Caryl)  never  mentioned  the  war  and  with  theirs  to  him,  which 
scarcely  mentioned  it  either.  They  gave  him  what  they  knew 
he  wanted;  raised  for  him  the  curtain  behind  which  so  much 
of  the  old  world  had  got  bundled.  It  didn't  even  matter  that 
what  they  showed  him  was  rather  broken  and  battered.  Things 
like  that  didn't,  to  Allan,  who  could  always  build  them  up 
anew  for  himself. 


It  was  Guen  who  went  to  hear  Maurice  state  his  case  to  the 
local  Tribunal.  It  was  hopeless,  of  course,  from  the  first,  with 
Maurice  taking  his  stand  like  that  on  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
and  not  so  much  as  a  church  membership  to  show !  According 
to  the  puzzled  old  gentlemen  of  the  Tribunal  if  you  really 
believed  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  you  went  to  church. 
Maurice,  on  the  contrary,  insisted  that  it  was  the  one  really 
valid  reason  for  staying  away.  This  was  beyond  the  old 
gentlemen,  who  seemed  depressed  about  things  and  had  noth- 
ing at  all  to  suggest  when  the  Military  Representative  said, 
"I'm  afraid,  sir,  we  must  have  this  man!" 


40  INTRUSION 

They  had  him,  though  not  very  usefully.  He  was  arrested 
just  a  week  later,  during  Allan's  first  "leave,"  and  Guen  had 
loathed  them  because  they  couldn't  arrange  things  better.  Even 
Caryl,  looking  at  Allan's  white  face,  was  moved  to  tears.  They 
were  a  miserable  seven  days,  and  everyone  was  relieved  when 
they  came  to  an  end. 

Presently,  during  the  summer,  Anne  Suffield  developed 
''nerves"  over  the  Zeppelin  raids  and  fled  with  her  protesting 
family  to  Teddington,  where  in  the  blue  and  gold  weather 
Guen  saw  her  new  book  through  the  Press  and  punted  her 
mother  up  through  the  lock  to  Kingston.  The  winter  was  a 
gap,  with  one  bright  gleam  at  the  end  of  it  in  April  when  Allan 
came  home  again  on  leave  and  saw  Maurice  Linton's  face, 
though  behind  bars,  for  a  while.  Madeleine  was  at  Rotting- 
dean  with  the  Osentons,  so  that  Allan  and  she  did  not  meet 
until  the  October  when  Allan  had  his  leg  injured  at  Passchen- 
daele  Ridge  and  came  home  for  good. 


Limping  a  little  Allan  got  back  presently  to  his  Insurance 
Office,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  found  in  himself  a 
positive  grain  of  gratitude  for  the  existence  of  that  institution. 
Here  at  the  beginning  of  nineteen-eighteen  he  showed  more 
sign  of  that  "settling  down"  process  than  ever  before,  and  his 
father — never  able  to  understand  Allan's  disinclination  to  "come 
to  grips  with  life" — began  to  talk  complacently,  though  not 
to  Allan,  of  the  good  the  war  had  done  him.  The  correspond- 
ence, too,  with  Madeleine,  away  there  in  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
was  not  lost  upon  John  Suffield,  who  believed  in  marriage  as 
another  of  the  means  whereby  the  nonsense  is  knocked  out  of 
young  people  with  too  many  "ideas."  Allan,  John  Suffield 
said  to  his  wife,  was  "moving  along."  To  his  standards,  he 
meant,  and  to  his  conception  of  what  a  young  man  should  be, 
as  perhaps  Anne  Suffield  knew. 

Actually,  however,  Allan  was  not  "moving  along"  at  all, 
but  standing  still.  His  attitude  to  life  at  this  stage  was  best 
expressed,  perhaps,  by  the  phrase  Carpe  diem,  and  certainly 
that  other — the  dream  and  the  business — epitomised  it.  The 
undisciplined  child  in  Allan  that  had  cried  out  for  the  dream 
had  been  dragged  through  the  war,  and  though  the  war,  miracu- 


INTRUSION  41 

lously,  had  not  killed  it,  something,  certainly,  had  happened 
to  it.  Silent  now,  and  unassertive,  it  gave  Allan  no  trouble  at 
all,  so  that  though  he  still  saw  life  as  an  adventure  beckoning 
from  the  edge  of  things,  and  himself  as  a  prisoner  within  four 
walls,  he  was  strangely  able  to  bear  it.  For,  at  the  moment, 
he  had  had  enough  of  adventure.  He  was  tired.  The  dull 
houses,  dull  people  and  dull  jobs  to  which  he  had  returned 
were  so  many  sedatives,  and  sedatives,  at  the  moment,  were 
what  he  wanted  most.  Goodness  knows  how  long  he  would 
have  continued  to  want  them  or  how  long  this  interval  of 
serenity  would  have  lasted  if  it  had  been  left  to  itself.  But 
it  was  not  left  to  itself.  Suddenly,  into  the  middle  of  it  was 
flung  the  news  of  Maurice  Linton's  death  in  prison — which  not 
only  smashed  up  Allan's  little  patch  of  serenity,  but  for  a  time 
withered  and  devastated  the  universe. 

A  month  later,  when  he  stumbled  out  of  his  misery  and  a 
little  blindly  began  to  pick  up  again  the  threads  of  his  life,  a 
passionate  anger  took  hold  of  him.  Maurice  had  turned  his 
back  contemptuously  upon  the  juggernaut  and  the  juggernaut 
had  crushed  him.  But  there  was  worse  in  it  than  that.  There 
had  been  those  who  had  watched  the  juggernaut  at  work — 
who  hadn't  lifted  a  hand  to  save  the  man  who  was  being 
crushed,  who  thought,  perhaps,  that  he  deserved  his  fate. 
That  was  what  Allan  hated  most — the  callous  swinging-by  of 
an  indifferent  world.  Contemplating  it,  his  old  air  of  quiet 
detachment  dropped  from  him.  He  began  to  plunge  into 
movements  and  local  "protest"  meetings,  and  helped  to  pass 
resolutions  and  gave  a  good  deal  more  money  to  the  Cause  of 
Progress  than  he  could  afford.  But  with  the  hot  weather  (when 
even  the  Cause  of  Progress  showed  a  tendency  to  slow  down) 
Allan  emerged,  looking,  Guen  thought,  rather  like  an  automatic 
figure  jerked  by  invisible  wires  and  mouthing  the  word  "democ- 
racy." The  feverish  phase  passed  and  a  quieter  Allan  sat 
down  to  clarify  his  opinions.  The  result  was  the  beginning 
of  a  novel;  several  bitter  poems  and  two  satires  in  free  verse. 
The  satires,  later,  found  their  way  into  a  slim  volume  with, 
others,  like-minded;  the  bitter  poems  appeared  one  by  one  in 
Antony  Gore's  Life  and  Letters,  and  the  novel  was  never  fin- 
ished. Somehow  Allan  lost  faith  in  it  when  Guen  shook  her 
head  over  it  and  said  he  was  only  interested  in  what  his 
characters  believed  about  the  Cause  of  Progress,  that  as  persons 


42  INTRUSION 

he  didn't  care  about  them  at  all.  This  was  so  true  that  Allan 
gave  up  the  role  of  novelist  with  percipitancy  and  got  back  to 
his  satires. 

And  there  Guen  encouraged  him.  She  thought  that  this  age 
had  failed  miserably  because  it  had  produced  no  real  satirist — > 
no  Dryden,  no  Byron,  no  Jonathan  Swift. 

There  was  another  thing,  too,  that  resulted  from  Allan's 
many  meetings  and  his  attempts  to  clarify  their  effect  upon 
him — and  that  was  a  general  understanding  that  at  the  next 
election  Allan  would  vote  Labour.  He  was  certainly  "moving 
along."  Unfortunately,  however,  from  John  Suffield's  point 
of  view,  he  was  moving  in  quite  the  wrong  direction. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

1 

IF,  as  Jan  had  suggested,  Lieutenant  Ancell  had  really  had 
doubts  as  to  Roberta's  honesty,  he  was  mistaken,  for  two 
mornings  after  the  incident  of  the  rain  the  things  Guen  had 
lent  her  were  returned. 

"Well,  she's  been  quick  enough!"  Jan  said,  recognizing  the 
handwriting  on  the  label. 

Rather  too  quick,  it  seemed,  because  after  breakfast  Allan 
came  across  his  sister  in  the  bath-room  dropping  the  contents 
of  Roberta's  misshapen  parcel  into  the  dirty  linen  basket,  for 
Roberta  had  been  in  such  a  hurry  to  show  herself  honest  she 
had  not  stayed  to  show  herself  fastidious.  Guen's  clothes  had 
been  returned  unlaundered.  She  caught  Allan's  eye  and  she 
laughed.  Allan,  however,  did  not,  and  Guen  laughed  again — 
not  this  time  at  herself,  but  at  Allan,  whose  face  was  positively 
funny  in  its  intensity.  As  though  it  mattered!  She  shrugged 
her  shoulders  and  began  to  fold  up  the  brown  paper,  not  seeing 
the  little  note  which  slipped  out  from  it  on  to  the  floor.  Allan 
went  on  with  the  business, of  washing  his  hands,  wondering 
why  he  should  mind  so  much  that  that  sort  of  habit  should  go 
with  that  sort  of  face,  and  why  he  wanted  Guen  to  go  out 
without  seeing  Roberta's  note  down  there  on  the  floor. 

She  did  presently,  with  a  word  of  warning  to  Allan  about 
the  time.  He  stooped  down,  recovered  the  note  and  read  it. 
A  moment  later  he  screwed  it  up  and  pushed  it  down  into 
his  coat  pocket.  It  could  not,  he  decided,  be  shown  to  Guen 
because  it  would  amuse  her,  and  somehow  or  other  he  had  to 
shield  Roberta  from  the  amusement  of  his  family.  They  would 
smile  at  her  note  as  they  had  smiled  when  she  had  said  sweetly, 
"And  who  is  Emily  Bronte?"  or  when  they  said  afterwards 
that  her  face  went  oddly  with  the  things  she  said.  .  .  .  Yet 
there  was  not  so  very  much  wrong  with  the  note  except,  per- 

43 


44  INTRUSION 

haps,  its  ending,  and  a  certain  vagueness  as  to  the  spelling  of 
"Suffield." 

Out  there  in  the  roadway  Allan  fished  it  out  again  and  read 
it  once  more  before  tearing  it  into  fragments  and  tossing  it 
into  the  gutter.  He  watched  the  October  wind  whirl  the  white 
pieces  round  and  round  before  scattering  them  broadcast;  and 
as  he  walked  on  to  the  station  he  felt  pleased  and  triumphant, 
as  though  in  some  absurd  fashion  he  had  saved  the  writer 
of  that  poor  little  note  from  something  that  might  have  hurt 
her.  From  what?  From  Guen's  funny  little  trick  of  raised 
eyebrows  and  shoulders,  from  her  faint,  amused  smile  that  he 
knew  she  wouldn't  be  able  to  help?  Why  did  he  care  what 
Guen  thought  of  this  girl  he  had  only  seen  for  a  moment,  whom 
he  never  expected  to  see  again  and  who  had  never  heard  of 
Emily  Bronte?  The  girl  was  a  fool,  of  course.  Why  on  earth 
did  he  mind  that  Guen  should  show  that  she  thought  so,  too — • 
a  fool  of  not  too  delicate  perceptions,  who  couldn't  write 
English  and  couldn't  spell  what  passed  for  it?  "I  am,  Yours 
truely.  .  .  ."  How  Jan  would  have  laughed  if  he  had  got 
hold  of  it! 


But  Jan  laughed  enough  as  it  was — and  for  reasons  of  his 
own. 

"Did  she  wash  'em?"  he  asked  Guen  when  she  came  down 
from  the  bath-room  and  Guen  had  said,  "No  ...  I  suppose 
it's  ridiculous  that  I  should  have  liked  her  better  if  she 
had.  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  hang  it  all!"  Jan  said,  "she  does  have  a  cold  bath 
every  morning." 

"You've  made  enquiries  on  the  subject,  I  suppose?"  Guen 
had  asked.  But  Jan  had  retreated  behind  his  Morning  Post. 

"Oh,  well  ...  she  looked  as  though  she  did,  anyhow  1" 
he  said  and  smiled  a  little,  as  though  at  his  own  perspicacity, 
but  really  because  he  could  hear  Roberta  saying  it  "Oh,  hang 
it  all,  I  do  have  a  cold  bath  every  morning!" 

She  had  sat  opposite  him  only  the  evening  before  in  a  little 
Soho  restaurant  and  had  smiled  at  him  over  her  glass  of  Graves. 
This  meeting  was  the  explanation  of  that  "To-morrow  then, 
that's  settled!"  which  Madeleine  had  overheard  on  the  thres- 


INTRUSION  45 

hold  of  the  Mount  Calm  drawing-room.  Jan,  due  to  return 
to  Camp  on  the  Wednesday,  did  not  believe  in  missing  an 
opportunity.  And  Roberta,  sipping  her  wine,  told  him  that 
she  had  that  afternoon  taken  his  sister's  belongings  to  the  post. 
"So  she'll  see  I'm  honest,  anyway,"  she  said.  And  Jan  had 
said  teasingly,  "I  hope  you  washed  'em!" 

"Washed  them?  Why,  there  wasn't  time.  After  all,  I 
only  wore  them  home.  Of  course,  I  changed  at  once.  .  .  . 
Besides  ...  oh,  hang  it  all,  I  do  have  a  cold  bath  every 
morning!" 

Jan  had  laughed  and  laughed.  It  was  so  screamingly  funny, 
somehow,  that  she  shouldn't  know  that  Guen  would  care  so 
much  less  about  that  fine  virtue  of  honesty  than  about  this 
lesser  one  of  finesse.  People  were  absurd  about  their  skins, 
of  course.  .  .  .  Guen  with  her  "I'd  have  liked  her  better  if 
she  had,"  and  Roberta  with  her  comic  insistence  on  her  morn- 
ing tub. 

He  had  sobered  down  presently  and  eaten  his  dinner,  after 
which  he  secured  a  taxi  and  took  Roberta  down  to  the  Coliseum. 
Roberta  had  no  sort  of  objection  whatever  to  taxis — nor  any 
objection,  either,  it  seemed,  to  Jan's  arm  round  her  waist  nor 
to  a  stray  kiss  or  two.  They  make  you  comfortable  in  the 
stalls  at  the  Coliseum  and  provide  just  the  sort  of  amusement 
Jan  and  Roberta  enjoyed.  Nothing  highbrow,  thank  you  very 
much,  for  them.  Later,  when  the  "show"  was  over  (Roberta 
called  it  that,  carelessly,  in  the  approved  fashion  of  the  initiate) 
they  agreed  they  had  had  a  very  jolly  evening. 

"We'll  have  another  next  time  I'm  up,"  Jan  said.  "Rotten 
luck  I  go  back  to-morrow." 

Trifles  like  unwashed  linen  and  badly-written  letters  were 
not  likely  to  upset  Jan.  His  uses  for  Roberta  were  quite 
unconnected  with  laundries  or  grammar.  Besides,  if  it  came 
to  that,  Guen  had  a  good  deal  more  money  to  spend  on  laundries 
than  Roberta  had. 

Guen  would  have  agreed.  It  wasn't  that  at  all,  of  course, 
but  only  that  a  thing  of  this  sort  somehow  stamped  one.  You 
couldn't  get  away  from  it.  It  was  like  picking  your  teeth  at 
the  meal  table  or  coming  down  to  breakfast  with  a  divorce 
between  your  blouse  and  skirt  and  your  hair  in  curling  pins. 
They  argued,  all  of  them,  some  want  in  the  woman  who  could 
be  guilty  of  them — some  lack  of  personal  nicety.  It  was  diffi- 


46  INTRUSION 

cult  to  explain.  You  only  knew  that  no  woman  who  valued 
her  self-respect  would  do  them  .  .  .  that  you  would  hate  to 
do  them  yourself. 

But  Roberta  cared  very  little  about  that  vague  and  unfriendly 
virtue  of  self-respect.  Perhaps,  at  heart,  she  cared  for  nothing 
very  much  save  other  people's  admiration,  for  that  was  what 
she  lived  by — and  on.  It  was  a  sort  of  mental  and  bodily 
pabulum,  and  she  concentrated  only  on  the  things  which  pro- 
duced it.  Her  future,  as  she  knew,  depended  upon  her  raising 
someone's  admiration  sufficiently  to  get  the  someone  to  marry 
her.  The  idea  of  marriage  was  disturbing:  but  you  couldn't, 
if  you  were  a  woman,  have  everything.  .  .  . 

Not  that  Jan  intended  to  marry  her.  That  young  man, 
indeed,  saw  marriage  as  a  wholly  supererogatory  ceremony  in 
life  with  nothing  whatever  to  recommend  it.  He  found  other 
ways  of  putting  this  belief,  however,  when  Anne  Suffield  hoped 
audibly  that  her  sons,  when  the  war  was  over,  would  marry 
and  settle  down.  Jan  would  smile  and  throw  her  a  fond  glance. 
"All  right,  mater.  When  I  see  anybody  half  as  nice  as  you, 
I  will." 

It  sounded  very  well — and  Anne  Suffield  loved  it.  She 
thanked  God  she  had  such  good  sons.  But  perhaps  she  thanked 
Him  especially  for  Jan,  who  never  gave  you  the  dreadful  feel- 
ing of  futility  that  oppressed  you,  sometimes,  with  Allan. 
Jan  was  a  crystal  vase.  Nothing  was  hidden.  He  neither 
worried  nor  disturbed  you.  Anne  Suffield,  true  to  her  class 
and  tradition,  did  not  want  to  be  disturbed  or  worried.  No 
wonder  that,  in  her  heart,  she  loved  Jan  best,  even  if  she  were 
too  good  a  mother  to  admit  it. 


Jan,  of  course,  was  one  of  the  first  people  to  get  out  of  the 
Army  after  the  signing  of  the  Armistice.  Nobody  was  at  all 
surprised  that  he  took  immediate  advantage  of  that  blessed 
word  "pivotal,"  which  no  one  could  define,  but  which,  like 
somebody's  pen,  was  a  boon  and  a  blessing  to  men! 

Jan  shook  the  war  from  his  shoulders  as  a  dog  shakes  water. 
The  Armistice  was  signed  and  the  war  over.  (It  irritated  him 
when  Allan  said  it  wasn't.)  He  had  done  his  bit  and  wanted 
to  be  allowed  to  forget  it.  So  Jan  bought  a  couple  of  new 


INTRUSION  47 

suits  and  went  out  in  the  evenings  to  meet  a  lot  of  other  people 
similarly  minded.  He  thought  it  about  time  that  his  parents 
turned  out  the  Canadians  who  were  living  in  their  house  at 
Highgate.  He  was  never  an  enthusiast  for  the  great  London 
river,  and  besides,  just  now,  Highgate  would  have  suited  all 
his  arrangements  a  good  deal  better  than  Teddington.  But  the 
distance  between  Teddington  and  Highgate  was  made  the 
excuse  for  his  non-appearance  at  dinner  at  least  one  evening 
a  week,  and  for  the  occasional  nights  when  he  didn't  come  home 
at  all.  It  was  much  more  comfortable,  so  he  said,  to  have  a 
meal  out  and  go  across  for  "a  game  with  the  boys  over  North." 
Jan  was  an  ardent  billiard-player,  but  his  mother  thought  he 
let  the  "game  with  the  boys"  go  on  far  too  late. 

"I'm  sure  you  don't  get  enough  sleep,"  she  would  say,  look- 
ing at  him  for  traces  of  the  truth  of  her  remark  and  sometimes, 
but  not  always,  finding  them.  It  used  to  amuse  Jan. 

"Don't  you  worry,  old  lady,"  he  would  say,  "I'll  look  after 
that  all  right." 

You  couldn't  help  feeling  that  Jan  "got  enough"  of  most 
things  in  the  world — of  all  the  things,  anyway,  that  he  thought 
worth  while.  There  were  a  good  many  of  them. 


November,  in  nineteen-eighteen,  was  a  dull  month  in  spite 
of  London's  Day  of  Rejoicing  and  the  crowd  that  gathered 
outside  Buckingham  Palace  and  shouted  that  it  wanted  the 
King.  Madeleine  was  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  writing  occasion- 
ally to  Guen,  but  never  to  Allan;  and  somehow  the  knowledge 
that  she  never  intended  to  write  to  him  again  made  life  very 
flat.  December  was  better,  because  there  was  the  excitement 
of  the  coming  election,  the  political  meetings  that  preceded 
it — and  the  results,  which  Allan  did  not  find  exciting  at  all. 

Christmas  came  and  was  disappointing  in  the  way  that  only 
Christmas  can  be.  It  passed,  and  January  came,  fine  and  mild 
and  engaging.  Towards  the  end  of  it  Anne  Suffield  had  a 
birthday,  and  coming  out  of  a  shop  one  evening  in  Oxford 
Street  from  purchasing  a  handbag  Guen  thought  she  might 
like,  Allan  came  face  to  face  with  Roberta. 

At  first  Roberta  looked  annoyed.  Allan  had  come  out  of  the 
shop  in  a  hurry  and  had  cannoned  with  some  force  against  her 


48  INTRUSION 

shoulder.  In  the  midst  of  his  apologies  came  mutual  recog- 
nition. 

"HalZo/"  he  said,  and  then,  somehow,  could  think  of  nothing 
at  all  to  say.  The  blood  surged  up  into  his  face;  he  felt  very 
foolish.  Roberta,  however,  smiled  the  pretty  smile  she  kept 
for  young  men  and  held  out  her  hand. 

"My  word!"  she  said,  "surprises  do  happen  and  no  mistake. 
But  I  mustn't  stop  a  minute.  I'm  meeting  a  friend  and  I'm 
late  already.  Men  hate  to  be  kept  waiting,  don't  they?" 

Allan  said  vaguely  that  he  supposed  they  did.  His  intelli- 
gence had  not  drifted  back  to  him,  or  if  it  had  was  occupied 
in  thinking  that  here,  on  this  bitter  night,  she  looked  even 
lovelier  than  when  he  had  seen  her  before.  She  was  well- 
dressed,  too,  in  an  excellently  cut  coat  with  a  deep  fur  collar. 
And  she  looked  gay — as  though  life,  since  he  had  seen  her  last, 
had  been  very  kind  to  her. 

"I  can't  stop — reely  I  can't,"  she  said,  as  Allan  showed 
some  inclination  to  linger.  "I've  got  a  dinner  on — and  a 
theatre."  She  smiled  again  and  was  affable.  Allan  found  her 
wonderful  to  look  at.  All  Oxford  Street  faded  into  insignifi- 
cance before  the  warmth  and  glow  and  colour  that  was  Roberta. 
To  Allan,  tired  and  jaded  from  the  day's  dull  work,  it  was  like 
a  tonic  just  to  look  at  her. 

"Come  to  a  theatre  with  me  one  evening,  will  you?"  he  asked, 
and  for  the  first  time  he  seemed  to  hear  himself  speaking. 
His  voice  sounded  unfamiliar,  and  what  he  said  ridiculous,  for, 
of  course,  he  didn't  want  to  take  Roberta  to  a  theatre.  She 
would  bore  him  to  death.  You  couldn't  sit  and  stare  at  a  girl 
all  the  evening  without  saying  something,  and  what  on  earth 
did  you  find  to  say  to  a  girl  who  had  never  heard  of  Emily 
Bronte?  But  Roberta  was  already  accepting. 

"All  right,"  she  said,  "if  I  can  choose  the  play." 

Again  his  unfamiliar  voice  saying  unfamiliar  things. 

"Of  course.     When  shall  it  be?" 

She  considered.  "Not  'to-morrow.  I  must  have  my  beauty 
sleep.  What  about  the  day  after — Thursday?" 

"Right-o.     What  time?" 

"Seven?" 

"Make  it  six-thirty,  then  we  can  eat  something  some- 
where. .  .  .  You  want  to  get  on,  don't  you  ?  Let  me  walk 
with  you." 


INTRUSION  49 

"Oh,  no  thank  you,  I'm  not  going  your  way  at  all.  Besides, 
you're  in  a  hurry,  too." 

"I'm  not  now." 

He  fancied  that  her  colour  deepened,  that  her  eyes  hardened 
as  they  left  his  face  and  searched  the  roadway. 

"Oh,  do  you  mind?"  she  said.  "I  think  I'd  better  get  this 
bus.  .  .  .  Thursday.  Six-thirty  at  the  Circus,  Central 
London  Tube.  Good-bye!" 

The  bus  was  stopping  to  set  down  a  passenger.  Roberta 
jumped  on  the  footboard,  waved  her  hand  and  was  gone. 

"Well,  I'm  damned!"  Allan  said  and  walked  on  with  his 
slightly  perceptible  limp.  But  all  the  way  home  his  blood 
raced  hot  in  his  veins  and  a  pulse  beat  fiercely  against  his 
temples.  The  image  of  Roberta  tortured  his  brain  which  yet 
saw  the  whole  episode  as  an  oddity  there  was  no  accounting 
for.  And  he  wanted  to  account  for  it.  It  couldn't  be  merely 
that  Roberta  was  good  to  look  at:  he  had  met  many  girls  who 
were  that,  girls  whom  Guen  and  Jan  had  called  "pretty"  or 
"handsome,"  and  he  felt  they  would  know.  And  yet  what  else 
was  there  about  Roberta  which  attracted  him?  She  hadn't 
any  brains:  she  wasn't  interested  in  things  or  ideas  and  was 
obviously  very  ill-read.  His  life  and  hers  didn't  touch  at  any 
point  at  all — it  was  inconceivable  that  they  ever  could!  And 
yet  some  part  of  him  over  which  he  had  no  control  had  asked 
her  to  spend  an  evening  with  him!  He  would  be  expected  to 
talk  and  make  himself  agreeable.  And  all  he  wanted  to  do 
was  to  sit  still  and  look  at  her.  The  situation  was  absurd. 
Also,  it  was  vaguely  disturbing. 

Something  else,  too,  was  disturbing — the  knowledge  that  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life  there  was  something  he  could  not  tell 
Guen;  it  got,  somehow,  everlastingly  in  the  way  of  all  the  things 
that  he  could.  It  ought  to  have  been  quite  simple  to  say  "I 
met  Miss  Leigh  to-day  in  Oxford  Street."  But  it  wasn't.  It 
was,  in  fact,  so  difficult  that  he  couldn't  even  attempt  it.  Coin- 
cidence was  the  most  ridiculous  thing.  Yet  if  Guen  hadn't 
asked  him  to  collect  that  handbag  he  would  never  have  met 
Roberta,  for  one  didn't  walk  down  Oxford  Street  for  pleasure. 
It  was  a  street  he  loathed,  yet  de  Quincey  had  walked  up  and 
down  it  with  his  Ann.  That,  somehow,  ought  to  have  made 
more  difference  than  it  did. 

But  even  if  coincidence  would  explain  his  encounter  with 


ISO  INTRUSION 

Roberta,  it  certainly  wouldn't  explain  that  invitation  to  the 
theatre.  Nothing  really  explained  that. 

Jan  that  night  did  not  come  home.  They  had  all  gone  to 
bed,  leaving  the  door  unbolted,  and  in  the  morning  it  was 
unbolted  still.  At  breakfast  Anne  Suffield  was  mildly  con- 
cerned with  the  results  of  this  infatuation  for  billiards,  and 
her  husband,  less  mildly,  with  the  shortcomings  of  the  South 
Western  time-table. 

Jan  was  home  in  the  early  afternoon,  however,  loaded  with 
apologies  and  parcels  and  with  theatre-tickets  in  his  pocket  for 
some  performance  that  evening.  He  hoped  they  had  guessed 
he  had  missed  the  train:  he  had  meant  to  wire  and  had  been 
so  busy  it  had  slipped  his  memory.  He  thanked  God  for 
Bloomsbury  and  the  Waverleys.  They  did  you  very  well,  those 
IWaverley  people. 

It  was  Anne  Suffield  who  suggested  that  when  they  got  back 
to  Highgate  they  might  have  a  billiard-table  fixed  up.  "Jan's 
so  fond  of  his  game,"  she  said.  And  John  Suffield  didn't  see 
why  not  at  all.  "It  wouldn't  do  me  any  harm  to  have  a  quiet 
game  occasionally.  And  I  daresay  Jan  wouldn't  mind  giving 
me  a  lesson  or  two." 

"Not  at  all,  sir.     Delighted!"  Jan  said. 

He  was  really  a  most  admirable  son.  You  would  never  have 
guessed  from  his  manner  that  a  billiard-table  "in  the  family" 
was  about  the  last  thing  he  wanted — or  meant  to  have.  The 
supreme  and  resistless  merit  of  the  game  was  that  you  played 
it  in  other  people's  houses.  Because  for  Jan  billiards  was  less 
a  game  than  an  explanation.  There  was,  in  fact,  nothing  at 
all  that  you  couldn't  explain  by  it.  That  "game  with  the  boys" 
saved  a  deal  of  trouble  all  round,  for  it  was  a  legend  in  which 
everybody  believed.  Even  Guen. 


It  was  Allan  of  all  unlikely  people  who  suspected  it  first. 
It  began  the  next  morning  by  Allan's  finding  a  lace  handker- 
chief on  the  floor  of  the  hall  and  by  Jan's  appearance  as  he  was 
examining  the  border  for  a  clue  to  its  owner. 

"It's  not  the  girls',"  he  said,  "because  of  the  scent."  Both 
Caryl  and  Guen  detested  perfumery. 


INTRUSION  51 

"It's  all  right,"  Jan  said,  "I  know  whose  it  is.  Rather  nice 
that  scent.  .  .  .  Amami,  isn't  it?" 

"Don't  ask  me!"  said  Allan,  and  laughing  they  went  in  to 
breakfast.  They  were  alone  that  morning.  Guen  and  Caryl 
(both  bad  risers)  were  not  yet  down,  and  Mrs.  Suffield  after 
her  theatre  was  breakfasting  leisurely  in  bed. 

"You're  quite  a  stranger,"  Allan  said,  pushing  an  uninter- 
esting post  on  one  side.  "I  hear  you  missed  your  train  on 
Tuesday." 

"You  can  put  it  like  that  if  you  like,"  Jan  said. 

"Like  what?"  asked  Allan.     "Don't  be  a  silly  ass." 

"Oh,  it's  all  right,  old  chap.  You  needn't  go  off  the  deep 
end.  It  was  only  a  theatre  and  a  girl  and  supper  afterwards. 
You're  so  damn  Puritanic." 

There  was  a  little  silence.  A  queer,  unaccountable  constraint 
had  settled  upon  Allan  which  was  three  parts  distaste.  It 
was  not  what  Jan  said,  but  his  manner  of  saying  it,  as  though 
he  invited  you  to  tear  away  the  veils;  to  read  into  that  legend 
of  billiards  and  lost  trains  whatever  you  chose.  "You  can  put 
it  that  way  if  you  like!"  But  Allan  didn't  like.  Something 
in  him  was  hurt  and  smarted  horribly.  .  .  .  But  he  reacted 
presently  from  his  own  distaste.  What  a  fuss  about  nothing! 
As  though  he  hadn't  known  for  years  that  Jan  was  for  ever 
carting  some  girl  about.  Jan  was  made  that  way;  he  would 
philander  at  sixty. 

"It's  a  pity  you  don't  pop  off  to  a  theatre  more  often,  old 
chap,"  Jan  told  him  now.  "Do  you  a  world  of  good." 

It  was  Thursday — the  day  of  his  appointment  with  Roberta. 
Allan  blushed. 

"Well,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I'm  going  to  see  something  or 
other  to-night." 

"Highbrow  or  fluff?"  , 

"^   Allan's  blush  at  least  did  not  lessen. 

"Well,  not  'highbrow,'  I  should  say." 
^    Jan  whistled,  then  laughed — suddenly  and  explosively. 

"You  gay  dog!"  he  said.  "Ask  her  if  she's  seen  Chu  Chin 
Chow."  And  again  he  laughed  in  that  sudden  boisterous 
fashion. 

"All  right,"  said  Allan.     "What's  the  matter?" 

"Nothing,  oh,  nothing!"  Jan  said,  "but  you  ask  her — if  she's 
seen  Chu  Chin  Chow." 


52  INTRUSION 

The  sound  of  Jan's  hilarious  merriment  followed  Allan  out 
into  the  street.  He  pulled  up  his  coat  collar  and  scowled 
blackly  into  the  bright  face  of  the  January  morning,  and  Alice 
coming  in  with  Guen's  porridge  was  informed  by  Jan  that  the 
world  was  a  damn-funny  place. 

"I  suppose  it  is,  Mr.  Jan — if  you  come  to  think  of  it!  I've 
heard  my  father  say  that  a  sense  of  humour's  a  great  asset  in 
life." 

"Asset's  the  word,  Alice.  Asset  does  you  and  your  father 
credit.  And  you  can  take  it  from  me  that  a  sense  of  humour's 
the  only  thing  in  life  that  matters.  You  may  tell  a  man  he's 
a  liar,  a  scoundrel,  a  thief,  and  he  won't  care  a  tuppenny  damn. 
But  if  you  tell  him  he  hasn't  a  sense  of  humour  he'll  want  to 
flay  you  alive.  .  .  ." 

"Good  morning,"  said  Guen's  voice  from  the  doorway. 
"Allan  gone?" 

She  sat  down  and  began  turning  over  her  letters— evidently 
a  dull  lot,  with  the  exception  of  one  which  she  slipped  unopened 
into  the  pocket  of  her  brown  frock.  Alice  collected  Allan's 
plates  and  cup  and  went  out. 

"Enjoy  your  play?"  Guen  asked  Jan  over  the  edge  of  her 
porridge  spoon. 

"Rather.  I  say,  Guen,  what  do  you  think?  Allan's  taking 
a  girl  to  the  theatre  to-night.  .  .  .  Fact." 

"Why  shouldn't  he?" 

"Oh,  no  reason — only,  you  know,  Allan  doesn't." 

"Take  girls  to  the  theatre?  No,  but  I  wish  he  would.  It 
would  be  very  nice  for  him — and  for  them." 

"Oh,  I  daresay  ...  all  depends,  of  course  .  .  ."  and 
Jan  shrugged  eloquent  shoulders. 

"Don't  be  beastly,"  said  Guen.  "And  how  do  you  know 
it's  a  girl  to-night?  Did  he  tell  you?" 

"Allan?     Rather  not." 

"Then  how  do  you  know?" 

"Well  ...  he  wanted  me  to  recommend  a  play.  .  .  . 
Verb.  sap. — to  quote  the  classics.  I  suggested  Chu  Chin  Chow. 
But,  of  course,  it  wont  BE  Chu  Chin  Chow." 

"Why  not?" 

"Oh,  well  ...  the  girl's  seen  it.  Sure  to  have,  I  mean. 
Everybody  has." 

"7  haven't." 


INTRUSION  53 

"Oh,  you!  You  don't  count.  You  don't  care  for  the  East. 
You're  like  the  chimney  sweep  who  was  shown  a  photograph 
of  Jerusalem  and  saw  nothing  but  a  sad  lack  of  chimneys. 
Here,  I  must  be  off." 

At  the  door  he  cannoned  into  Caryl. 

"You  seem  very  gay!"  she  said. 

"Do  I?  Well,  I've  heard  a  lot  of  funny  things  this  morn- 
ing. What  do  you  think?  Allan's  taking  a  girl  to  the  theatre 
to-night." 

"I  don't  call  that  funny.     That's  merely  nice — for  the  girl." 

Jan  laughed. 

"I  say,  Caryl,  do  you  know  a  chap  named  Merrick — Richard 
Merrick?" 

"Of  course.     He's  a  friend  of  the  Hestons." 

"I  heard  yesterday  that  he's  very  fond  of  a  little  girl  named 
Caryl  Suffield!" 

Sudden  colour  burned  Caryl's  face  and  neck  a  deep  red  as 
she  came  across  to  the  table. 

"What  rot!"  she  said.     "Who  told  you  that?" 

"Jack  Heston.  He  seemed  pretty  sick  about  it.  I  met  him 
in  Cheapside.  .  .  .  We  had  lunch  together." 

Caryl  became  nasty. 

"I  always  understood,"  she  said,  "that  Jack  Heston  was 
wounded  in  the  leg.  And  I  think  it's  time  you  caught  your 
train." 

Still  laughing  Jan  went 


CHAPTER  FIVE 


ALLAN  got  down  punctually  to  the  Oxford  Street  Tube, 
but  Roberta  was  late.  She  usually  was — on  principle, 
believing  that  it  "did  a  man  good"  to  wait  for  a  girl; 
showed  him  that  she  wasn't  "falling  over  herself"  for  his 
favours.  So  Allan,  unaware  that  he  was  being  carefully  put 
in  his  place,  bought  an  evening  paper  to  help  pass  the  time  it 
was  taking  Roberta  to  do  it.  But  he  discovered  that  he  was 
too  excited  to  read  anything  except  a  column  on  the  weather, 
which  told  him  that  it  was  the  coldest  day  of  the  year;  that 
ice  lay  on  the  ponds  at  Bushey  Park  three-quarters  of  an  inch 
thick;  and  that  the  thermometer  at  Hampton  Court  registered 
eleven  degrees  of  frost.  Somehow  these  facts  made  the  air  at 
Oxford  Circus  Tube  station  colder  than  before.  The  rising 
and  plunging  of  the  lifts  made  horrible  draughts :  Allan  turned 
up  his  coat  collar  and  moved  over  to  the  bookstall  to  escape 
them.  The  home-bound  crowd  surged  on  and  on — presumably 
everybody  lived  on  the  Central  London  Tube.  Every  now  and 
then  somebody  planked  down  a  penny  and  asked  for  a  paper, 
and  turning  away  again  bumped  hard  into  Allan's  shoulder. 
They  said  "Sorry"  and  Allan  "Granted"  until  he  got  tired  of 
it.  Sorry  and  granted!  What  a  vocabulary!  The  automatic 
ticket-machines  made  a  hideous  noise,  and  all  the  people  who 
used  them  seemed  to  want  to  see  how  violently  they  could 
manipulate  the  apparatus  which  tirelessly  belched  forth  tickets. 
Two  girls  at  a  cigarette  kiosk  discussed  a  recent  dance  they 
had  been  at  together  and  seemed  to  think  Allan  was  interested 
in  it,  too.  People  came  in  and  looked  at  the  clock,  then  went 
out  again  and  looked  at  the  street.  (Evidently  other  folk  were 
late,  too!)  The  plaintively  affectionate  voices  of  the  flower- 
sellers  at  the  street  corner  floated  in  to  him.  "Vilets,  dearie? 
All  fresh  .  .  .  vilets?"  He  took  out  his  paper  again  and 
stamped  his  feet,  but  the  paper  reeked  of  unpleasant  happen- 

54 


INTRUSION  55 

ings — a  resumed  inquest  on  an  actress  who  had  died  from  an 
overdose  of  cocaine;  comment  on  the  fighting  in  the  Berlin 
streets  and  more  talk  of  the  deaths  of  Liebknecht  and  Rosa 
Luxemburg.  The  sight  of  their  names  in  print  sent  a  wave  of 
pity  through  Allan.  He  wondered  if  they  knew,  now,  how 
much  their  effort  and  suffering  was  worth,  whether  it  was  worth 
anything  at  all  or  whether,  for  those  two  restless  souls,  it  was, 
at  the  last;  just  the  quiet  and  the  dark.  .  .  .  But  here  the  Lon- 
don crowd  surged  on  its  after-the-war  way,  in  search  of  gaiety 
and  the  youth  that  one  had  supposed  dead!  And  Allan  who 
had  lived  through  unspeakable  things  waited  here  in  the  cold 
for  a  girl  who  had  caught  him  somehow  by  a  pretty  face  .  .  . 
a  girl  who  couldn't  (even  on  such  a  night!)  manage  to  get 
there  to  time  It  was  a  strange  world! 

Then  Roberta  came. 

"Hallo!"  she  said.     "Not  late,  am  I?" 

"Fifteen  minutes,"  said  Allan,  and  then,  looking  at  her  his 
anger  melted. 

"It's  all  right,"  he  said,  "now  you've  come." 

He  felt  it  was!  Nothing,  now,  seemed  to  matter.  He 
piloted  her  through  the  crowd,  down  the  street  to  the  Marguerite 
for  dinner.  He  was  cold  no  longer,  for  the  hot  blood  coursed 
through  him  like  a  river  in  full  flood:  his  face  and  neck 
burned  and  he  wished  he  didn't  limp.  Roberta  however,  rather 
liked  it.  As  early  as  this  in  nineteen-nineteen  a  young  man 
who  limped  was  an  object  of  interest  to  the  passers-by  and  of 
pride  to  the  young  woman  he  escorted. 

Allan  found  it  better  sitting  down.  He  did  not  talk  much, 
but  he  listened  to  what  Roberta  said,  though  without  hearing 
very  much  of  it.  It  was  strangely  exciting,  somehow,  to  sit 
opposite  to  her  and  he  was  filled  with  a  vague  pleasure  because 
her  face  showed  no  more  than  the  merest  dusting  of  powder 
that  Guen's  might  have  exhibited.  Allan  detested  the  modern 
craze  for  cosmetics.  It  made  a  girl  look  as  though  she  had 
been  turned  out  with  hundreds  of  others  in  a  factory — and 
to  one  colour-scheme.  Roberta  did  not  make  up:  but  then 
Roberta  did  not  need  to.  She  was  the  lucky  possessor  of  a. 
flawless  skin :  neither  sun  nor  wind,  heat  nor  cold  had  the  least 
effect  upon  it.  To  Allan  it  was  a  perfectly  wonderful  phe- 
nomenon. Good  skins  appealed  to  him  as  years  ago  (per- 
haps still)  they  appealed  to  his  father.  Roberta  had  taken 


$6  INTRUSION 

off  her  coat  and  sat  clad  in  a  gauzy  frock  of  pale  blue,  cut 
wide  on  the  shoulders  and  with  short  sleeves — a  ridiculous 
frock  (even  under  the  warm  coat)  for  one  who  travelled  by 
Shanks's  pony  and  the  omnibus.  And  her  shoes  were  ridiculous, 
too,  and  what  she  said,  so  that  you  had  to  keep  looking  at 
her  face  and  her  wonderful  hair  to  stand  her  conversation. 
Certain  words  like  "awfully"  and  "dreadfully"  and  "naturally" 
came  out  with  appalling  regularity,  and  certain  phrases.  She 
seemed  to  have  a  working  vocabulary  of  about  fifty  words. 
And  Allan  found  himself  trying  to  remember  how  many 
Shakespeare  was  reputed  to  have  had  and  Milton  and  a  lot 
of  other  people  Roberta  had  probably  never  heard  of!  But 
she  had  a  sense  of  humour — uncertain,  perhaps,  and  limited, 
but  in  good  working  order.  So  that  Allan  stopped  thinking 
about  the  dead  and  their  vocabularies  to  reflect  that  Roberta 
was,  in  her  way,  quite  clever.  He  discovered,  too,  that  Guen 
had  been  right  about  the  photographs  on  the  tube.  Roberta 
had  gone  to  Hilmer  Roydon's  studio  to  help  in  "touching  up" 
processes,  to  interview  clients  and  to  make  appointments  for 
them;  but  had  stayed  to  be  photographed. 

"You  wouldn't  believe  how  tired  you  get  of  having  your 
photograph  taken,"  she  said.  "And  it's  awfully  dull  at  the 
studio  now  Tommy's  gone.  ...  Oh,  you  needn't  look  like 
that;  it's  all  right,  Tommy's  a  girl.  Ethel  May  her  real  name 
is;  Ethel  May  Carew,  but  since  she  left  to  go  on  the  pictures 
she  calls  herself  Tommy.  She  got  the  second  prize  in  a  kinema 
competition.  P'raps  ycu  read  about  it  in  the  Sunday  papers? 
(Allan  hadn't.)  /  think  she's  awfully  clever.  But  mother 
doesn't  like  her;  she  never  approves  of  my  friends.  No,  reely. 
She's  always  on  to  me  to  drop  Tommy.  ...  I  say,  what  play 
are  we  going  to  see!" 

"I  thought,"  Allan  stammered,  "I  thought,  perhaps,  Chu 
Chin  Chow  ...  if  you  haven't  seen  it." 

Roberta  had.  He  saw  that  at  a  glance  before  she  said,  "Oh, 
you  haven't  bought  the  tickets?"  Allan's  face  seemed  to  be 
slipping  beyond  his  control.  Even  his  voice  seemed  not  to 
belong  to  him  as  he  murmured  something  about  having  only 
'phoned  the  box  office.  "Oh,  then  that's  all  right,"  Roberta 
said,  "we  needn't  collect  'em.  Can  I  have  an  ice?  I  hope 
they  won't  rush  you." 

He  didn't  care  if  they  did.     He  felt  he  had  been  rushed 


INTRUSION  57 

already;  could  hear  again  Jan's  boisterous  laughter  and  his, 
"Ask  her  ...  if  she's  seen  Chu  Chin  Chow." 

Certainty  descended  upon  him.  It  was  Jan  who  had  taken 
Roberta  to  see  Chu  Chin  Chow  on  Tuesday.  It  was  Jan  she 
had  been  going  to  meet  on  Tuesday  evening  when  he  nearly 
knocked  her  down  coming  out  of  that  shop  in  Oxford  Street. 
The  thought  stayed  with  him,  kept  him  quiet  in  the  taxi  that 
took  them  down  to  the  play  Roberta  had  elected  to  see.  He 
was  horribly  conscious  of  her  sitting  there  with  her  mocking 
roguish  air;  conscious,  too,  that  she  was  thinking  him  a  "mug" 
because  he  made  no  effort  to  kiss  her,  because  he  sat  stiffly  and 
awkwardly  at  her  side,  not  touching  her. 

She  was,  of  course,  though  her  mood  was  comparative; 
she  was  thinking  less  of  Allan  than  of  Jan,  of  whom  Allan  in 
some  perverse  way  kept  reminding  her.  Anybody  could  see, 
she  would  have  said,  that  they  were  brothers,  only  Jan  was 
ever  so  much  better  looking!  But  a  mere  family  likeness! 
What  was  that  beside  these  greater  (and  fundamental)  differ- 
ences she  discerned  between  them  ?  You  knew  where  you  were 
with  Jan,  and  he  would  have  seen  to  it  that  riding  in  a  taxi 
was  not  the  dull  business  it  was  with  Allan. 


The  play  Roberta  had  chosen  was  an  exclamation  mark  and 
probably  no  worse  than  others  of  its  class.  Certainly  it  didn't 
bore  Allan  half  as  much  as  he  had  expected — probably  because 
he  wasn't  thinking  very  much  about  it.  He  was  thinking  that 
Roberta,  for  all  she  had  for  him  this  queer  fascination,  though 
she  stirred  his  pulses  and  his  emotions  as  no  other  girl  had 
done,  was  not  for  him.  She  didn't  "link"  up.  They  didn't 
even  speak  the  same  language.  What  could  they  possibly  have 
in  common?  He  had  been  mad  ...  to  think  they  could  have — • 
even  for  an  evening.  You  could  not  imagine  so  impossible  a 
friendship  going  on.  It  wasn't  going  on,  of  course.  This  was 
the  beginning  and  the  end.  He  was  horribly  level-headed 
about  it,  as  though  some  part  of  his  brain  stood  aside  and 
condemned  the  failure  of  the  rest.  But  when  the  piece  was 
over  he  suggested  supper.  Roberta  refused. 

"I  daren't,"  she  said.  "I  get  into  such  an  awful  row  if  I'm 
late.  .  .  .  Mother's  so  strict.  Thanks  awfully,  all  the  same.** 


$8  INTRUSION 

"When  shall  I  see  you  again?"  he  asked  as  he  put  her  into 
her  North  London  bus. 

Roberta  smiled  back  at  him  from  the  step  of  it. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  .  .  .  I'm  dreadfully  full  up,  reely. 
Drop  me  a  card  to  the  Studio." 

She  liked  saying  "to  the  Studio."  It  made  people  look  at 
her  with  a  keener  interest,  even  if,  in  their  minds,  they  dubbed 
her  "Artist's  model." 

"*But  I  don't  know  the  address,"  Allan  began. 

"Oh,  turn  it  up  in  the  telephone  book.  .  .  ." 

"'Old  tight!"  said  the  conductor,  and  rang  his  bell.  His 
manner  said  as  plainly  as  possible  that  the  step  of  a  bus  and 
at  this  time  of  night  was  no  place  for  a  conversation  of  this 
sort.  The  bus  moved  on  and  left  Allan  standing  on  the  curb 
staring  after  it.  Half-way  across  Waterloo  Bridge  he  found 
he  had  only  ten  minutes  in  which  to  catch  his  last  train.  No 
wonder  that  on  Tuesday  Jan  had  lost  it.  The  wonder  was 
that  anybody  ever  caught  it. 

Jan  was  still  up  when  Allan  arrived  home,  and  roused  him- 
self to  inquire  after  the  success  of  his  evening. 

"By  the  way,  old  chap,  had  she  seen  Chu  Chin  Chow?" 

Unexpectedly  Allan  lost  his  temper. 

"You  know  quite  well  that  you  took  her  to  see  it  yourself 
last  Tuesday  evening,"  he  said.  "Why  the  devil  do  you  think 
it  necessary  to  keep  this  up?" 

"My  dear  old  chap!     Keep  what  up?" 

"This  pretence  that  you  don't  know  it's  Roberta  Leigh  I've 
been  to  the  theatre  with  this  evening  .  .  .  that  she  didn't  tell 
you  I  met  her  and  asked  her  on  Tuesday  evening." 

"Oh,  that's  all  right !  I  thought  you  didn't  ivant  me  to  know, 
you  were  so  deep  about  it.  Was  she  nice  to  you?" 

"Nice?    I  suppose  she  was.    I  haven't  thought  about  it." 

Jan  laughed. 

"No,  you  wouldn't  have  to,  with  Bobbie.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
•when  you're  with  her  you  don't  think  of  anything  else  except 
how  damn  pretty  she  is.  Did  it  take  you  like  that?  You 
get  used  to  it  in  time." 

"Have  you  got  used  to  it?" 

"Oh,  more  or  less  .  .  .  but  then,  I'm  not  such  a  silly  ass 
about  a  pretty  girl  as  you  are.  You're  so  damn  serious.  Pretty 


INTRUSION  59 

girls  don't  like  it.  If  you  take  'em  out  you  should  play  the 
game." 

"What  is  the  game?" 

"Didn't  Bobbie  show  you?" 

"What  the  devil  do  you  mean?"  , 

"Oh,  nothing — a  kiss  or  two  .  .  .  you  know.  Quite  harmless, 
I  assure  you.  Little  Bobbie  Leigh  can  take  care  of  herself. 
She  knows  her  way  about  very  well  indeed,  does  Bobbie  I 
Besides  .  .  .  mother's  so  strict.  Did  she  tell  you  that?" 

Allan  had  been  stirring  the  cup  of  cocoa  which  Alice  left 
habitually  on  the  hob  for  late  comers,  but  he  was  smitten  now 
by  a  distaste  for  it.  Again,  in  that  queer  fashion  of  the  morn- 
ing, the  veils  were  torn  asunder  and  life  showed,  beastly.  Even 
after  the  Army,  it  made  Allan  feel  sick,  because — this  wasn't 
the  Army.  There  was  more,  too,  than  that — more  than  his 
mere  personal  revulsion,  for  unexpectedly  his  thoughts  had 
moved  on.  ...  Why,  it  was  on  Tuesday  night  that  Jan 
hadn't  come  home.  ...  He  remembered  his  explanation.  .  .  . 
"Only  a  theatre  and  a  girl  and  supper  afterwards."  Oh,  it 
couldn't  be.  You  couldn't  believe  that  of  Roberta.  All  the 
same,  Allan  felt  suddenly  stifled  and  oppressed;  had,  for  one 
moment,  an  insane  desire  to  throw  Alice's  cocoa  into  Jan's 
handsome,  smiling  face.  Then  the  feeling  passed.  He  was 
only  cold  and  tired,  and  he  thought  of  nothing  save  that  cocoa 
was  a  simply  beastly  concoction  and  that  somebody  ought  to 
tell  Alice  of  leaving  it  about  like  that. 

"I'm  going  to  bed!"  he  said. 

"I  should,  old  chap.  And  you  give  it  up.  A  fast  life  doesn't 
agree  with  you.  Legs  and  bosoms  and  backs  don't  go  with 
your  temperament,  and  it's  a  pity  to  spoil  it.  Next  time  you 
make  Bobbie  go  to  something  highbrow.  Do  her  good." 

"Oh,  shut  up,"  said  Allan.  "There  isn't  going  to  be  any 
next  time." 

This  seemed  to  amuse  Jan,  for  as  he  knocked  out  his  pipe 
against  the  edge  of  the  fender,  he  smiled. 

"My  dear  old  chap,"  he  said,  "I  wouldn't  be  rash,  if  I  were 
you." 

"Oh,  go  to  hell!"  said  Allan. 


CHAPTER    SIX 

1 

AS  the  days  passed  it  seemed  to  Allan  that  there  were 
a  thousand  things  holding  him  to  his  resolution  not 
to  see  Roberta  again.  There  were  the  things  he  knew 
of  her,  that  he  had  seen  for  himself,  and  there  were  the  things 
he  didn't  know  at  all,  that  he  could  only  guess  at,  and  which 
were  concerned  not  only  with  Roberta  but  with  Jan.  And, 
more  than  all  else,  perhaps,  there  were  Jan's  witticisms. 

But  in  the  middle  of  February  these  came  to  an  end,  for 
Jan  went  up  to  Manchester  for  "the  firm."  He  did  not  go 
too  willingly  because  "it  always  rained  in  Manchester,"  and 
Jan  hated  the  rain.  But  on  this  Monday  of  mid-February  he 
left  behind  him  a  wretchedly  wet  day  and  the  Thames  in 
flood,  and  it  seemed  improbable  that  even  Lancashire  could 
be  more  depressing,  as  he  told  Guen  who  had  come  down  to 
the  station,  with  Leader,  to  see  him  off.  And  Leader  howled 
so  mournfully  when  Jan's  train  moved  out  of  the  station  that 
Guen  could  not  hear  what  it  was  Jan  called  out  to  her.  It 
was  probably  nothing  important,  but  it  worried  her  in  the 
stupidly  persistent  way  such  a  thing  always  does. 

When  the  train  had  gone  she  coaxed  Leader  on  to  the  top 
of  a  bus  and  rode  over  the  bridge  into  Richmond  town,  from 
where  she  walked  up  the  hill  and  into  the  Park.  It  had  stopped 
raining.  A  whispering  wind  was  abroad  and  the  afternoon 
was  one  tender  harmony  of  green  that  was  light  and  blue  that 
was  shadow. 

But  it  was  not  these  things  that  remained,  later,  in  Guen's 
mind,  but  only  that  one  miserable  little  fact — that  she  had 
not  heard  what  Jan  had  called  out  to  her. 

He  was  to  return  on  the  Friday,  but  on  that  evening  came 
a  note  to  the  effect  that  he  had  gone  out  to  the  coast  and  was 
spending  the  week-end  at  St.  Julian's.  He  would  not  be  home 
until  the  Monday  evening.  But  at  two  o'clock  on  Monday, 

60 


INTRUSION  61 

as  Anne  Suffield  was  settling  down  for  her  afternoon  nap,  a 
telegram  arrived.  It  was  from  St.  Julian's,  but  it  was  not 
from  Jan,  and  it  said: 

"Your  son  HI.    Please  come  at  once.     Goodman." 

"No  answer,"  Anne  Suffield  said  and  stood  quite  still,  hold- 
ing on  to  the  head  of  the  Chesterfield  while  Alice  sent  the  boy 
away  and  closed  the  door.  Outside  it  was  raining.  It  seemed 
to  Anne  Suffield  that  she  stood  there  for  a  century  with  her 
eyes  on  the  soft-falling  mist  of  it  before  she  found  words. 

"Mr.  Jan  is  ill  at  a  place  called  St.  Julian's.  .  .  .  We  mustn't 
be  frightened.  They  don't  say  very  ill.  Get  an  A.B.C.,  will 
you,  while  I  get  my  things  on?" 


The  Mrs.  Goodman  who  had  sent  the  telegram  proved  a 
tall,  well-dressed  woman  with  an  unpleasant  trick  of  looking 
at  you  via  the  bridge  of  her  nose,  and  an  air  of  resentment 
against  the  things  which  happen  to  the  owners  of  first-class 
boarding  houses.  But  she  led  the  way  upstairs  and  gave  Anne 
Suffield  what  information  she  had.  It  didn't  amount  to  much. 
Influenza  and  complications,  following  a  sore  throat  and  pain 
in  the  side  of  which  Jan  had  complained  on  the  Saturday  night. 
He  ought  not,  of  course,  to  have  gone  out:  there  was  a  cold 
wind.  But  he  would  go.  ...  Mrs.  Goodman's  whole  manner 
was  a  protest  against  people  with  sore  throats  and  pains  in 
their  sides  insisting  upon  going  out  in  the  cold.  Then  she 
opened  a  door  at  the  top  of  the  second  flight  of  stairs,  and  at 
the  sight  of  the  white  face  on  the  pillow  Anne  Suffield  s  heart 
contracted.  She  wanted  to  shriek  at  the  woman  at  her  side, 
"Can't  you  see  he's  dying?" 

,  She  was  sure  of  it:  nobody  could  look  like  that  and  live. 
But  he  was  conscious:  he  knew  her,  and  he  was  glad  she  had 
come.  He  said  that  over  and  over  again,  his  head  on  her 
breast.  He  never  said  anything  else,  and  soon  he  was  beyond 
words  altogether. 

The  doctor  came  back  at  ten.  It  was  useless,  he  said,  he 
could  no  nothing.  Anne  Suffield  was  glad  when  he  went. 

Towards  morning  Jan  died. 


62  INTRUSION 

His  mother  sat  there  all  through  the  dawn,  never  moving. 
The  sound  of  the  sea  came  up  insistent  and  sad,  as  though  its 
heart  was  broken  too.  And  presently,  when  the  post  office 
opened,  she  went  out  and  sent  a  telegram: 

"Dear  Jan  died  last  night.      Mother." 


The  telegram,  to  John  Suffield,  was  like  a  physical  blow.  He 
had  not,  that  morning,  gone  up  to  the  office,  but  had  waited 
for  news.  When  it  came  he  was  stunned.  Allan  had  already 
left  for  town,  and  it  fell  to  Guen  to  accompany  her  father  to 
St.  Julian's.  Alice,  weeping  and  distracted,  packed  a  handbag 
for  them,  and  Leader  sat  disconsolately  by  it  in  the  hall,  as 
though  he  wondered  why  all  forsook  him  and  fled.  He  knew 
the  signs. 

It  was  a  bright  but  showery  morning,  with  fine  rain  falling 
at  intervals  like  a  film  before  the  sun  and  blurring  all  the  land. 
Up  the  quiet  suburban  road  Jan  would  never  again  come 
walking,  nor  Leader  run,  barking,  at  his  side.  A  thought  not 
so  much  lacerating  as  queer.  You  couldn't,  somehow,  imagine 
Jan  dead.  Despite  the  "murmuring"  heart  the  Army  doctors 
had  given  him,  he  had  never  been  ill  in  his  life.  It  was  absurd 
he  should  have  died  in  two  days — snuffed  out,  like  a  candle  in 
the  wind.  But  on  the  station  she  was  stricken  to  the  heart  by 
the  sudden  memory  that  came  to  her  of  Jan  shouting  from  a 
moving  train,  something  she  could  not  hear. 

They  caught  a  fast  train  at  Euston  which  landed  them  at 
St.  Julian's  about  half-past  three.  Anne  Suffield  was  waiting 
for  them  at  the  station.  Her  white  face  and  frozen  air  stabbed 
at  Guen's  heart,  but,  too,  they  stirred  her  to  effort.  Her  very 
years  protected  her,  in  a  measure,  from  feeling  this  thing  as 
her  mother  and  father  felt  it,  for  whom  there  was  none  of  the 
resilience  that  was  youth.  Youth,  for  Anne  and  John  Suffield, 
had  died  with  Jan.  They  would  bury  it  presently  in  his  grave 
and  go  on  their  way  without  it. 

They  left  things,  now  that  Guen  had  come,  to  her;  and 
•with  a  sense  of  relief  she  found  that  they  would  be  able  to 
return  on  the  morrow,  and  Jan  would  go  with  them,  very 
still  and  perfectly  quiet.  It  was  like  a  cold  hand  squeezing  at 


INTRUSION  63 

your  heart  to  think  of  it.  The  crowded  train  and  the  long, 
polished  coffin,  with  his  name  on  it.  .  .  .  Arthur  Jannison 
Suffield. 


Half  an  hour  after  her  arrival  Guen  interviewed  Mrs.  Good- 
man in  her  cold,  prim  drawing-room  that  looked  out  to  sea 
and  smelt  of  furniture  polish.  Guen  felt  that  good  temper 
was  never  a  strong  point  with  Mrs.  Goodman,  and  she  saw 
that  just  now  what  there  was  of  it  was  being  unduly  tried. 
Perhaps  her  resentment  was  natural.  People  who  keep  board- 
ing-houses do  not  care  for  other  people  to  come  and  die  in 
them.  Luckily,  as  she  said  to  Guen,  she  had  just  then  but 
few  visitors,  because  people  didn't  like  a  corpse  in  the  house, 
and  were  scared  of  this  influenza — at  least  the  doctors  called 
it  influenza,  but  Mrs.  Goodman  reserved  her  opinion  on  the 
matter.  Guen  felt  she  was  expected  to  apologise  for  Jan — 
and  for  death.  Between  them,  Mrs.  Goodman,  no  doubt  about 
it,  was  seriously  inconvenienced.  She  seemed  to  have  charged 
something  for  that  in  her  bill — though  it  was  not  that  which 
staggered  Guen,  but  the  fact  that  the  bill  was  made  out  for 
two  people. 

"I  don't  understand  .  .  ."  she  began. 

"Mrs.  Suffield  left  on  Sunday  morning,  first  thing,  before 
Mr.  Suffield  was  taken  ill.  She  had  a  telegram  over-night." 

"Mrs.  Suffield?" 

Guen's  face  was  blank. 

"Mr.  Suffield  was  here  with  his  wife,  so  I  understood.  .  .  ." 

Guen  made  a  superhuman  effort  and  contrived  to  smile. 

"Oh,  yes  ...  of  course  ...  I  had  forgotten.  ..." 

She  paid  the  double  bill,  and  while  the  woman  receipted  it 
she  struggled  to  regain  composure.  The  mask  of  a  cold, 
unmeaning  smile  slipped  over  the  pink  and  brown  of  her  face, 
but  the  beating  of  her  heart  was  a  fierce  pain. v 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me,"  she  said,  as  she  took  the 
receipt  and  folded  it  up,  "if  you  have  mentioned  Mrs.  Suffield's 
visit  to  my  parents." 

Mrs.  Goodman,  miraculously,  had  not. 

"Then  I  should  be  obliged,"  Guen  said,  "if  you  would  not. 
It  might  distress  them,  just  now.  You  see  ...  the  marriage 

.  was  secret.  .  .  ." 


64  INTRUSION 

"Very  well,  as  you  please,  of  course."  Mrs.  Goodman's 
voice  was  cold  with  suspicion  and  her  angry  resentment.  Guen 
caught  her  gaze  and  held  it. 

"Thank  you  very  much,"  she  said. 

When  the  woman  had  gone  she  sat  down  in  a  chair  by  the 
window  and  let  the  meaning  of  what  she  had  said  drift  into 
her  mind.  It  surprised  her  to  find  that  the  thing  which  really 
disturbed  her  was  not  this  knowledge  that  had  come  to  her, 
but  the  fear  it  should  reach  her  mother.  Allan  and  she 
between  them  must  see  to  it  that  it  never  did,  because  she  would 
mind  so  much;  she  wouldn't  understand.  With  the  impudence 
of  omniscient  youth  Guen  was  positive  about  that.  Her  mind 
worked  quickly:  Allan  and  she,  between  them,  must  save  her 
from  the  knowledge.  There  would  be  Jan's  papers  and  cor- 
respondence for  which  they  must  make  themselves  responsible. 
It  could  be  done.  There  was  no  real  danger — save  that 
woman's  tongue.  .  .  . 

She  sat  up  and  snatched  at  a  paper  as  a  timid  knock  came  at 
the  door.  "Come  in,"  she  called  softly. 

The  girl  who  had  brought  them  tea  came  in  and  stood  just 
inside  the  door.  Guen  had  noticed  her  then  as  an  under-sized, 
under-nourished  girl  of  less  than  twenty,  and  saw  now  that 
she  had  large  pansy-blue  eyes  in  a  thin  white  face,  and  that  her 
hair,  which  should  have  been  prettily  picturesque,  was  merely 
untidy.  She  was  desperately  unattractive — even  to  a  feminine 
eye — but  the  pansy  eyes,  like  the  untidy  hair,  ought  to  have 
been  pretty. 

"If  you  please,  miss,  I  wanted  to  give  you  this.  .  .  ." 

She  held  out  her  hand — its  fingers  clenched  tightly  over 
whatever  it  was  she  held. 

"What  is  it?"  said  Guen,  "something  I've  dropped?" 

"No,  Miss.  .  .  .  Something  I  found  .  .  .  after  Mrs.  Suffield 
left." 

The  girl  opened  her  hand  and  dropped  into  Guen's  a  gold 
ring  set  with  one  large  ruby.  "But  how  do  you  know,"  she 
asked,  "that  this  belonged  to  ...  Mrs.  Suffield?" 

The  girl  had  noticed  her  wearing  it.  Besides,  she'd  left  it 
about  before.  She  used  to  take  it  off  when  she  washed  her 
hands.  .  .  . 

Guen  turned  the  ring  over.  It  was  certainly  the  sort  of 
thing  you'd  notice.  You'd  notice,  too,  what  was  written  inside 


INTRUSION  65 

it:  Diana  Wells.  Keith  Barrington  Hill.  May  20th,  1913. 
To  leave  a  compromising  thing  like  that  about! 

Guen  sat  there  turning  it  over  in  her  hands.  She  was  sud- 
denly very  tired  and  her  head  ached.  Twilight  was  stealing 
into  the  room:  outside  an  amber  sunset  crept  over  the  sand- 
hills: the  long  grasses  waved  back,  showing  their  silvery  sides. 
The  girl  turned  to  go,  dabbing  at  her  eyes  with  her  apron. 
"I  can't  bear  to  think  he's  dead,"  she  said.  "He  was  so  kind 
to  me." 

"We  used  to  think  he  was  kind  to  everybody,"  Guen  told  her. 

When  the  girl  had  gone  she  sat  there,  quite  still,  staring 
through  the  window.  Beyond  it  the  land  was  dim.  Beneath 
the  paling  yellow  gleam  that  was  the  sunset  the  silver  grasses 
waved  there  on  the  sandhills.  The  moon  was  up,  chill  and 
small,  in  a  cold,  ^grey  sky,  painted  with  that  one  faint  smear 
of  yellow,  towards  which  the  restless  sea  yearned,  sighing.  The 
world  had  shrunk  to  a  microcosm.  Everything  in  it  had  grown 
small.  Guen  herself  felt  small — and  utterly  unimportant. 
The  mighty  spectacle  of  Death  dwarfed  everything  else. 

At  dinner  the  eyes  of  the  little  maid  to  whom  Jan  had  been 
kind  were  red.  She  looked  as  though  at  any  moment  she 
would  break  down  and  cry  into  their  soup  or  onto  their  fish. 
But  Anne  Suffield  did  not  see  her.  She  saw  nothing  but  a 
white  face  that  had  death  in  it. 

There  were  things  to  do,  and  later  Guen  went  into  the  town 
to  do  them.  It  was  ten  o'clock  when  she  returned  and  went  in 
to  say  good-night.  Her  father  and  mother  were  in  bed,  but 
not  asleep.  Side  by  side  they  lay  there  straight  and  silent, 
thinking  their  own  thoughts — as  they  must  have  done  all  those 
years  ago  before  Jan  or  Pen  or  any  of  them  were  born.  She 
stooped  over  and  kissed  them.  Nobody  spoke,  save,  just  as 
Guen  turned  to  go,  her  mother.  "Guen,  leave  the  door  a  little 
open.  .  .  ." 

It  was  what  she  had  said  when  they  were  all  little  and  she 
was  afraid  they  might  want  her  in  the  night. 


CHAPTER    SEVEN 


THE  first  thing  to  do  was  to  tell  Allan.     Guen  saw  that: 
saw,  too,  that  nobody  else  must  know.     Not  even  A.G. 
Jan  was  dead  and  you  couldn't  go  about  repeating  that 
story:  the  idea  was  revolting.     So  Allan  was  told  and  had 
shown  no  surprise  at  all.     Guen  had  expected  surprise,  cer- 
tainly;  had  looked   for  everything,   anything,   but  this  queer 
little  air  of  knowledge,  detached,  cynical. 

For  Allan  had  said  nothing  to  Guen — nothing  to  anybody — 
of  that  suspicion  which  a  few  weeks  before  had  shot  up  in  his 
mind  like  a  rocket  and  died  down;  instantly,  perhaps,  but 
reeking  and  objectionable.  Now,  under  the  spur  of  Guen's 
information,  it  rose  again,  and  with  it  came  the  memory  of 
things  that  years  ago  men  at  the  office  had  said  to  the  callow 
youth  he  had  then  been;  at  which  he  had  reddened  and 
stammered.  They  must  have  found  him  amusing,  those  middle- 
aged  men,  with  wives  and  families  and  few  ideals  and  fewer 
illusions,  all  hinting  at  their  "pasts"  and  other  men's  "pres- 
ents." To  practically  all  of  them  women  were  no  more  than 
confectionery  upon  which  they  glutted  their  appetites  or  fed 
their  emotions.  Even  before  the  war,  though  he  still  cowered 
inwardly  beneath  their  phrases,  beneath  their  sex  jokes  and 
their  insistence  upon  the  "beastliness"  of  life,  Allan  had 
learned  not  to  show  it.  It  was  an  attitude  that  life  in  the  Army 
had  done  much  to  strengthen.  The  Army  had  been  informative; 
the  education  it  gave  you  in  at  least  one  direction  was  cer- 
tainly liberal.  Among  the  many  things  it  had  taught  Allan 
was  the  fact  that  he  belonged  to  a  tiny  minority,  because  here, 
at  twenty-six,  he  was  still  without  sexual  experience.  His, 
flag  of  personal  chastity  flew  still  at  high  mast.  It  waved  there, 
on  that  evening  of  Guen's  return,  in  a  stiff  breeze,  so  that 
he  saw  it,  somehow,  for  the  first  time,  as  a  thing  belonging 
to  and  immediately  concerned  with  himself.  For  the  first  time, 

66 


INTRUSION  67 

too,  he  saw  that  chastity  was  a  thing  he  expected — that  he 
took  for  granted — not  of  himself  alone,  but  of  others  for  whom 
he  had  affection  and  respect.  He  had  never  before  thought 
about  it  in  this  way — definitely,  as  a  hard,  strong  line,  of 
conduct,  a  green  path  in  a  muddy  country.  He  could  not 
bear  to  have  thought  of  women  in  the  same  way  some  of  the 
men  in  his  battalion  had  done;  his  mother,  Guen,  Madeleine, 
had  stood  there  as  an  eternal  bulwark,  and  somehow  he  had 
expected  that  they  stood  there  also  for  Jan.  And  they  hadn't. 
In  that  way  they  simply  hadn't  been  there  at  all 


On  the  morning  following  Jan's  funeral  there  were  two 
letters  addressed  to  him,  one  from  the  owner  of  the  ring  in 
Guen's  keeping  and  the  other  from  Roberta.  The  latter  Allan 
read  hastily,  then  tore  it  in  half  and  flung  it  down  into  the 
centre  of  the  fire.  "Nothing  important,"  he  said  to  Guen, 
thankful  they  were  breakfasting  alone.  Nothing  important! 
But  from  the  clean  surface  of  the  opposite  wall  what  she  had 
written  stared  relentlessly  back  at  him: 

"/  waited  over  an  hour  at  Piccadilly  last  night  and  you 
never  came.  I'm  so  miserable.  Please  tell  me  if  I've  offended 
you.  Yours  always,  Bobbie." 

There  was  a  good  deal  more  of  Mrs.  Hill's  letter,  but  it 
affected  him  differently.  None  of  its  sentences  wrote  them- 
selves on  the  wall.  .  .  .  They  were  written  in  a  neat,  educated 
hand  and  signed  "Di,"  and,  no  two  ways  about  it,  "Di"  had 
given  herself  away  altogether.  She  had  even  written  on  paper 
bearing  an  embossed  address — somewhere  in  Parson's  Green — 
out  Fulham  way.  They  wanted,  both  of  them,  not  to  read  it; 
but  they  had,  somehow,  to  find  out — enough.  They  found 
more  than  enough,  though  they  tried  not  to  look  at  it  too 
hard.  There  was  something  cruel  and  indecent  in  this  cold 
calculated  reading  of  a  "love-letter"  written  to  a  man  now 
cold  in  his  grave.  But  it  had  to  be  done:  here  and  now  the 
thing  had  to  be  scotched.  There  must  never  be  the  faintest 
chance  that  this  woman  would  write  again.  .  .  .  The  points 
Allan  and  Guen  were  after  now  were  all  there:  she  had 


68  INTRUSION 

missed  none  of  them.  Evidently  letter-writing  was  a  form  of 
self-expression  with  her:  she  was  one  of  those  people  who, 
pen  in  hand,  let  themselves  "go."  Guen  guessed  that  her 
letters,  at  times,  had  probably  bored  Jan,  for  neither  she  nor 
Allan  believed  that  Jan  had  taken  this  affair  as  seriously  as  all 
that.  It  had  none  of  the  saving  grace  of  a  grande  passion. 

Mrs.  Hill  wrote  that  she  had  reached  home  before  K.B., 
after  all,  thank  the  Lord.  "K.B.,"  of  course,  as  you'd  guessed 
from  the  ring,  was  her  husband,  Keith  Barrington  Hill;  she 
wrote  his  name  out  in  full  every  now  and  then,  as  though  that 
had  point,  as  though  they  had  used  it,  she  and  Jan,  as  a  joke 
between  them.  K.B.,  it  seemed,  not  yet  demobilised,  had  come 
home  unexpectedly  on  leave,  and  somebody — it  was  not  clear 
who — had  telegraphed  the  imminence  of  his  arrival.  Mrs. 
Hill's  head,  so  she  said,  had  ached  all  the  way  home  with 
thinking  of  excuses  if  he  had  got  there  first;  and  when  she 
arrived  it  ached  a  good  deal  more  because  she  found  she  had 
lost  her  ring  ("the  badge  of  all  my  tribe,"  she  called  it)  and 
"Keith  Barrington"  had  an  observant  eye  and  would  notice. 
That,  apparently,  was  still  troubling  her  peace,  though  K.B. 
' — yet — hadn't  noticed.  Her  instructions  for  its  return,  if  Jan 
had  found  it,  were  explicit  and  did  not  make  pretty  reading. 
(Allan  skipped.)  She  remembered  the  sore  throat  and  pain 
in  his  side  and  hoped  it  was  better.  The  rest  of  the  letter 
went  unread:  neither  Allan,  nor  Guen  presently,  had  stomach 
for  it.  Over  an  indecent  business  one  could,  if  one  cared,  be 
tolerably  decent.  Or  less  blatantly  indecent,  perhaps.  .  .  . 

Guen,  too,  shirked  the  final  page.  She  had  read  enough. 
Here,  as  far  as  this,  was  her  whole  case — K.B.'s,  too,  if  ever 
he  got  hold  of  it.  But  he  wouldn't!  They — she  and  Allan — ; 
were  going  to  make  very  sure  of  that. 

"What  a  fool!"  said  Allan. 

"For  having  loved  Jan?" 

"Love!"  said  Allan. 

"You  can't  judge,"  Guen  said.  "I  mean,  you've  no  right 
to  judge !  None  of  us  has !" 

"Oh,  I  know.  One  tries  not.  But  it  makes  me  sick.  .  .  .  The 
world's  full  of  this  beastliness.  Love  is  a  euphemism.  .  .  . 
Are  you  going  to  see  this  Mrs.  Hill?" 

"I  suppose  I  must.  God  knows  what  I  shall  find  to  say  to 
her.  I  wish  I'd  never  known.  .  .  I'd  rather  never  have  known." 


INTRUSION  69 

"Not  you!"  said  Allan.  "You're  one  of  those  people  who'd 
always  rather  know  everything.  So  am  I — though  I've  only 
just  found  it  out.  There  are  some  things  I'd  give  my  head 
to  know — for  certain." 

But  he  wouldn't.  There  were  some  things  he  would  never 
know.  Because  Jan  was  dead  and  these  things  that  he  wanted 
most  to  know  were  mixed  up  with  him  and  Roberta. 

Roberta!  He  wouldn't  think  of  her.  He  wouldn't  go  near 
her.  He  hadn't  seen  her  since  that  night  at  the  theatre.  She 
might  go  to  the  devil.  And  yet  those  words  in  her  untidy 
handwriting.  He  saw  them  yet.  You  never  came.  I'm  so 
miserable.  .  .  . 

He  pushed  back  his  chair  and  got  up.  He  would  be  late. 
Not  that  it  mattered.  Chiefs  and  colleagues  were  kind  at  times 
like  these — almost  as  if  they  expected  you  to  be  late;  as  if 
they  would  be  surprised  if  you  came  early. 


Guen  did  not  find  courage  enough  for  the  journey  to  Parson's 
Green  until  several  days  later,  and  by  then  she  and  Allan 
had  discovered  something  else — that  this  affair  with  Diana 
Hill  was  not  the  only  one  with  which  Jan  had  enlivened  his 
days.  There  was  nothing  to  tell  how  much  he  had  felt — or 
if  he  had  felt  anything  at  all.  The  feeling,  it  seemed,  had 
always  been  on  the  side  of  the  women.  They  wondered,  Allan 
and  Guen,  how  Jan  had  managed  so  neatly  to  steer  clear  of 
tragedy;  there  was  no  trace  of  it  in  any  of  the  letters  they 
found — and  there  were  a  good  many  of  them.  Was  it  that 
the  feeling  didn't  go  deep:  that,  for  the  girls,  as  for  Jan,  these 
affairs  were  just  "larks,"  something  you  indulged  in  and  were 
never  sorry  or  regretful  about  afterwards?  There  were  women, 
they  knew,  who  thought  that  "larks"  of  this  sort  connoted 
freedom. 

Yet  the  thought  of  the  interview  was  distressing.  She  felt 
instinctively  that  it  was  going  to  be  exactly  the  sort  of  thing 
she  could  not  bear.  Some  people  turned  sick  and  faint  if  they 
looked  upon  physical  wounds,  but  to  Guen  it  was  always  the 
moral  hurt  that  did  the  harm:  the  ordeal  of  looking  on  at 
the  brutal  murder  of  someone's  self-respect,  of  courage, 
honesty  and  truth.  At  school  once  a  girl  had  been  expelled 


70  INTRUSION 

for  theft:  the  code  of  the  head  mistress  demanded  that  she 
be  dragged  from  room  to  room,  made  to  stand  in  front  of 
each  class  while  a  detailed  charge  was  read  out  against  her. 
The  culprit  had  not  wept  nor  hidden  her  face:  her  attitude 
was  referred  to  as  "brazen,"  and  yet  to  Guen  it  was  as  if  she 
had  withered,  there  before  her  eyes.  The  girl  who  sat  next  to 
Guen  had  begun  to  cry,  and  Guen  always  remembered  how  she 
had  envied  her.  So  much  nicer  to  be  able  to  cry  than  to 
try  to  suppress  this  miserable  feeling  in  the  pit  of  your  stomach — 
that  warned  you  that  if  you  didn't  get  out  into  the  fresh  air 
you'd  make  a  dreadful  exhibition  of  yourself. 

It  was  a  weakness  which  had  grown  up  with  her — a  tendency 
to  shirk  not  the  physically  abhorrent,  but  the  thing  that  was 
morally  distasteful,  that  cut  at  life's  essential  dignity  and 
decency.  Yet,  remembering  her  mother,  she  would  not  shirk 
this  time.  She  set  out  for  the  address  in  Parson's  Green  given 
on  Diana  Hill's  embossed  note-paper,  but  as  she  went  the 
sombre  beauty  of  the  February  afternoon,  with  its  pageant  of 
pale  colour  in  the  sky  drawing  out  already  to  the  west,  seemed 
but  to  emphasise  the  ugliness  of  the  scene  to  which  she  was 
going,  so  that  only  her  strong  sense  of  its  absolute  necessity 
drove  her  on.  They  had,  somehow,  to  silence  Mrs.  Hill. 

Mrs.  Hill's  house  was  called  "The  Elms" — probably  because 
there  were  no  elms  within  half  a  mile  of  it,  but  only  acacia 
trees  in  a  neatly-kept  front  garden.  A  maid  showed  Guen 
into  a  pink-and-white  room  that  overlooked  another  garden, 
whose  peace  was  marred  by  the  passing  of  trains  at  the  bottom, 
and  presently  a  tall,  dark  girl  in  a  lavender  frock  came  in.  She 
was  very  pale,  but  you  felt  that  ordinarily  her  colour  was  deep 
and  vivid  like  the  heart  of  a  damask  rose.  She  wasn't  cordial, 
yet  somehow  at  the  sight  of  her  Guen's  courage  revived. 
Aloofly  her  pride  came  up  and  reinforced  it.  She  introduced 
herself.  Mrs.  Hill's  face  seemed  to  say  that  she  had  heard  of 
Guen  (as  though  Jan  had  boasted  of  his  "clever"  sister) ;  it 
said,  too,  that  she  found  Guen — like  most  clever  women — not 
much  to  look  at,  and  that  black  was  the  last  colour  she  ought 
to  have  worn. 

It  was,  as  Guen  had  known  it  would  be,  an  impossible 
interview.  The  air  was  electric  with  the  hostility  of  this  dark, 
handsome  woman  whose  ring  and  letter  Guen  carried  in  her 
handbag.  Every  second  the  hostility  grew — thickened  and 


INTRUSION  71 

deepened,  until  it  was  suffocating.  And  Guen  could  find 
nothing  to  say:  was  utterly  bereft  of  all  ideas,  all  thought, 
save  that  it  was  an  offence  she  should  be  there  at  all;  an 
outrage  that  she  had  those  things  in  her  bag  and  an  indecency 
that  she  must  say — what  she  had  come  to  say.  Had  she 
invented  this  situation  in  a  novel  she  would  have  known  how 
to  handle  it;  faced  with  the  reality  in  this  astounding  fashion 
she  could  do  nothing  with  it  at  all.  Out  of  the  intolerable 
*,juiet  came  the  sound  of  Mrs.  Hill's  voice  quivering  with  pride 
and  enmity,  and  the  sound  of  her  own,  saying  strange  things 
you  didn't  believe  true,  that  were  like  the  nails  they  had  put 
in  Jan's  coffin,  that  hurt  somehow  in  the  same  dreadful  fashion. 
And  when  they  stopped  Mrs.  Hill  sat  down.  She  sat  down 
like  a  log  and  she  said  nothing  for  what  seemed  an  eternity.  .  .  . 
She  sat  there  tearing  up  the  letter  Guen  had  handed  her  back, 
looking  as  if  she  were  tearing  up  some  little  bit  of  herself.  Her 
face  was  twisted  with  misery;  its  youth  had  gone,  its  very 
skin  seemed  dry  and  shrunken.  The  house  was  very  quiet  as 
she  rose  and  threw  the  torn-up  letter  into  the  fire.  The  white 
flames  leapt  at  the  pieces,  drawing  them  in,  so  that  almost 
immediately  nothing  at  all  remained  of  Diana  Hill's  attempt 
at  self-expression  save  the  few  charred  scraps  of  paper  that 
lay  on  the  top  of  her  bright  wood  fire.  It  had  been  singularly 
unsuccessful. 

To  Guen  it  was  all  dreadful  and  revolting  and  completely 
iinbearable.  She  rose,  stricken  with  the  need  to  escape. 

And  then,  before  she  could  get  out  of  the  room,  there  came 
a  ring  at  the  front  door:  a  ring  that  sent  a  sudden  mask  of 
carefulness  slipping  over  the  twisted  misery  of  Diana  Hill's 
face,  veiling  even  the  eyes  and  the  tiny  treacherous  nerves  at 
the  corners  of  the  mouth.  It  had  the  facility  of  the  thing  that 
has  become  a  habit.  This  affair  with  Jan  may  not  have  been 
a  lark:  but  it  had  carried  deception  in  its  train.  It  had  made 
life  nasty. 

Out  there  in  the  hall  a  murmur  of  words  .  .  .  indistinct, 
yet  with  a  hideous  clarity.  To  Guen  it  was  as  if  the  girl  who 
had  opened  the  door  was  purposely  delaying,  as  though  giving 
her  mistress  time  to  gather  her  forces,  to  realise  whom  it  was 
she  was  letting  in.  But  it  was  as  if  the  man  said  no  more  and 
no  less  than  this:  "Don't  talk  to  me.  You're  a  woman  and 
women  hold  together."  She  wondered  if  it  was  going  on  for 


72  INTRUSION 

ever.  She  sat  there  staring  at  the  door,  expecting  it  to  open. 
Her  marvellous  calm  had  gone  to  pieces:  she  wanted  to  shriek, 
and  all  the  time  she  was  wondering,  with  some  detached  corner 
of  her  brain,  what  fool  first  thought  of  putting  brass  fittings 
on  a  white-painted  door. 

In  that  brief  fraction  of  time  the  details  of  Diana  Hill's 
pink  drawing-room  stamped  themselves  for  ever  upon  the 
tablets  of  Guen's  mind.  Months  after  she  saw  them  as  clearly 
as  she  saw  them  then.  The  hideous  modern  furniture,  the 
polished  fender  of  brass,  the  pink  tiles,  the  white  muslin 
curtains,  draped  back  and  fluted  at  the  edges,  the  small  square 
garden  beyond,  the  neat  patterned  wall-paper  hung  with 
pictures  that  didn't  matter;  the  fern  in  its  brass  stand  (how 
fond  people  were  of  something  to  polish!),  the  bowl  of  narcissi 
in  the  window,  smelling,  as  Alice  would  have  said,  as  if  you 
were  going  to  your  own  funeral — and,  in  the  midst,  Diana 
Hill's  face,  white  and  a  little  disgusting,  because  though  she 
had  readjusted  the  mask  she  did  not  seem  able  to  prevent  her 
fright  from  peeping  out  at  the  eyes  and  mouth. 

Then  the  door  opened  and  a  thick-set  man  in  khaki  came 
into  the  room.  Self-possession  descended  upon  Guen  as  a 
mantle.  She  flashed  Diana  Hill  a  look  which  though  it  said, 
"Introduce  me,  please  1"  said  a  good  deal  more  than  that. 
It  said,  "Oh,  play  up!  For  heaven's  sake  play  up!" 

Mrs.  Hill  "played  up."  She  "played  up"  desperately,  the 
cracks  in  the  mask  no  longer  visible. 

"Hallo,  K.B.,"  she  said.  Her  tone  was  so  marvellously 
indifferent  you  knew  she  had  done  this  sort  of  thing  before. 
"This  is  Miss  Brown.  She  called  to  return  my  purse." 

"That's  very  kind  of  you,  Miss  .  .  .  Brown."  "K.B."  held 
out  his  hand,  but  his  voice  was  hostile,  thick  with  suspicion  of 
her,  his  wife  and  the  universe.  "But  I  didn't  know  it  was  her 
purse  my  wife  had  lost." 

You  saw  her  true  colour  then.  It  came  up,  red,  like  a  rose, 
over  cheek  and  neck,  tearing  its  way  through  the  white  mask 
that  impeded  it. 

"Oh,  the  ring,"  she  said.  "I  found  that  behind  the  bath 
this  morning.  I  must  really  be  more  careful." 

K.B.  looked  at  her. 

"You  must,"  he  said  quietly. 

She  flinched  at  that,  as  though  the  lash  in  the  quiet  words 


INTRUSION  73 

got  home.  The  slash  it  made  in  the  mask  of  carefulness 
showed  livid,  and  from  it  deadly  fear  reached  out  and  stabbed 
Guen's  precarious  calm  to  the  heart.  Once  again  she  had  a 
furious  longing  to  escape,  to  get  away  from  this  man's  quiet 
eyes  and  hostile  voice.  How  much  did  he  suspect?  How 
much  did  he  know?  She  felt  that  once  she  got  outside  she 
would  run. 

"Let  me  see  you  out,  Miss  Brown." 

He  held  the  door  open,  his  eyes  upon  her  face,  so  that  she 
did  not  dare  look  round.  She  walked  past  him  into  the  hall, 
racking  her  brain  to  think  of  something  that  should  detain 
him  at  the  door  long  enough  to  give  the  woman  in  there  in  the 
drawing-room  time  to  pull  herself  together.  But  she  could 
think  of  nothing  at  all,  save  that  his  lawn  was  in  excellent  con- 
dition and  the  winter  jasmine  in  bloom — which  he  could  quite 
well  see  for  himself.  He  wasn't  grateful  for  what  she  said, 
and  interested  neither  in  it  nor  in  her.  As  he  stood  there 
holding  open  the  door  for  her  his  whole  manner  and  bearing 
said,  as  his  voice  in  the  hall  had  done,  "You're  a  woman  .  .  . 
and  women  hold  together.  And  I  wish  you'd  take  yourself  off." 

She  did.  She  walked  down  to  the  gate,  which  she  carefully 
latched;  smiled,  and  saw  the  door  of  "The  Elms"  shut  to. 
A  few  steps  and  she  was  out  of  sight  and  out  of  hearing.  She 
could  run  if  she  liked. 

But  she  didn't  run.  She  walked  out  into  the  high-road 
(where  there  were  placards  announcing  a  Labour  victory  for 
West  Ley  ton)  and  climbed  on  to  a  bus.  She  was  cold  and  her 
hands  were  trembling  so  that  she  could  scarcely  find  the 
coppers-  for  her  fare.  Horror  and  disgust  swept  over  her  in 
waves;  she  felt  physically  unclean — as,  if  she  would  never  get 
rid  of  the  atmosphere  of  that  unspeakable  household,  where 
deceit  lurked  and  suspicion  and  intrigue.  How  much  did  that 
man  know?  Nothing.  He  couldn't  possibly  know,  and  what 
he  suspected  didn't  matter.  He  had  no  proof.  They  were 
safe — her  mother,  her  father;  and  Jan — in  his  grave.  There 
would  be  no  scandal.  Her  unbearable  afternoon  had  justified 
itself.  But  she  was  so  tired  she  could  have  cried,  and  she  hated 
herself  because  she  minded  so  much  that  this  should  have 
happened  to  her. 

At  home,  her  mother  sat  by  the  fire  in  an  unlighted  room. 
She  had  evidently  been  sewing,  for  as  Guen  moved  across  the 


74  INTRUSION 

room  she  stumbled  over  a  reel  of  cotton  and  sent  it  rolling 
noisily  on  to  the  polished  floor  that  skirted  the  carpet.  But 
Anne  Suffield  was  not  sewing  now;  her  hands,  idle  and  folded, 
rested  in  her  lap.  Guen  slipped  down  at  her  feet,  and  put 
her  head  on  her  mother's  knee. 

"I'm  so  tired!"  she  said.  She  was  more  than  tired:  she 
was  faint  with  nausea  and  disgust:  her  nerves  felt  frayed. 
She  wanted  to  shriek. 

Anne  Suffield  said  nothing.  Her  idle  hands  did  not  move; 
Just  remained  there,  cool,  like  flowers,  beneath  Guen's  hot 
cheeks  and  lips,  and  suddenly  a  spasm  of  anger  ran  through  her 
because  her  mother  did  not  care  for  her — or  for  Allan  or  for 
Pen  or  for  anyone — as  she  had  cared  for  Jan.  Guen  turned 
in  her  modernity  and  rebelled.  It  wasn't  fair:  parents  ought 
to  love  their  children  equally;  it  wasn't  right  that  her  mother 
should  have  loved  Jan  best — that  she  should  still  love  him  best. 
But  she  always  would:  you  couldn't  alter  or  change  her. 
She'd  love  him  that  way  even  if  she  knew — what  Guen  and 
Allan  knew.  But  she  never  would.  It  was  on  that  thought 
Guen's  anger  trickled  out — like  sand  through  an  hour-glass — 
and  was  spent.  She  was  only  infinitely  tired  and  weary,  and 
her  head  ached  unbearably.  Long  sobs  shook  her  body;  tears 
flowed  thickly  upon  the  cool  hands  folded  like  flowers  beneath 
her  face.  They  moved,  hovered  for  a  second  about  her  rough 
head  and  over  her  ears,  and  were  still. 

"Ssh  ...  s  ...  sh,"  said  Anne  Suffield,  as  though  she  were 
soothing  a  child.  "S  ...  sh  ...  s  ...  sh  ..."  and  presently, 
"Why  do  you  cry?" 

Guen  raised  her  head  and  stared  at  the  fire.  She  wanted  to 
say :  "Because  I'm  tired  and  because  my  head  aches  and  because 
you  sit  here  in  the  dark  and  forget  us  all."  But  she  said 
nothing,  only  got  up  and  sat  in  a  chair,  staring  down  into  the 
fire  until  presently  her  father  came  in  from  the  city.  She  rose 
then  and  escaped.  When  Allan  came  in  she  encountered  him 
in  the  hall. 

"Come  up  to  my  room,"  she  said,  "  I  want  to  speak  to  you." 

He  gave  her  one  quick  look  and  put  down  his  stick  and  got 
out  of  his  coat 

"It's  all  right,"  she  said.  "Horrible — but  all  right.  .  .  . 
We  can't  talk  about  it  here." 

They  went  upstairs. 


INTRUSION  75 


At  dinner  that  night  Allan  exerted  himself  to  talk  to  his 
mother.  .  .  .  They  had  saved  her  from  a  painful  piece  of 
knowledge,  he  and  Guen  between  them:  what  they  had  to  do 
now — all  of  them — was  to  make  things  up  to  her;  to  be, 
between  them,  so  bright  and  entertaining  that  she  didn't  notice 
the  gap  quite  so  much.  She  was  very  brave;  when  her  eye 
caught  his  she  smiled:  she  was  attentive,  saw  that  your  plate 
was  replenished.  But  she  was  very  pale  and  her  eyes  appeared 
to  have  slipped  farther  back  into  her  head.  Her  face,  like  a 
fading  flower,  had  shut  up.  Her  dark,  soft  hair  still  showed 
scarcely  a  thread  of  grey;  but  in  some  strange  subtle  fashion 
she  looked  older.  Allan  understood  what  Guen  had  known 
that  night  at  St.  Julian's — that  the  last  remnant  of  Anne 
Suffield's  youth  had  died  with  Jan.  She  had  carried  it  about 
with  her  so  long  it  was  strange,  as  yet,  to  see  her  without  it. 
You  couldn't  believe  that  in  one  short  week  she  had  become 
definitely  middle-aged. 

Allan,  as  he  looked  at  her,  felt  queerly  old  and  protective. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  his  love  for  his  mother  had  suffered  some 
deep  and  rare  change,  so  that  now,  for  the  first  time,  it  demanded 
something  of  him — effort  or  thought  or  vigilance.  It  no  longer 
just  accepted.  Instead  of  absorbing,  it  gave  out,  strove  and 
yearned  and  divined.  He  had  a  sense  he  had  never  experienced 
before  of  being  of  use.  The  knowledge,  strangely,  was  like  a 
strong  wind  blowing  through  his  soul,  bracing  him  to  effort 
and  purpose. 

So,  too,  did  Caryl's  swift  smile  across  the  table.  It  was  to 
Allan  as  though  she  answered  his  thought,  as  though,  too,  she 
had  crystallised  her  grief  and  was  able  to  see  down  through  its 
depths  to  the  heart  of  life.  Allan,  smiling  back,  saw  that  brief 
parting  and  widening  of  Caryl's  red  mouth  as  a  thing  beautiful 
and  brave,  and  memorable  as  the  glimpse  of  a  bird  flying  low 
between  the  dark  and  the  light. 

But  Caryl  was  not  smiling  when,  after  dinner,  she  took  Allan 
on  one  side  and  asked  him  what  was  wrong  with  Guen.  Allan 
said  he  thought  she  had  had  a  rather  unpleasant  afternoon. 

"Unpleasant!"  said  Caryl.  "She  looks  as  though  she's  seen 
something  nasty — a  street  accident  or  something  like  that — and 
it's  making  her  violently  sick  inside." 


76  INTRUSION 

Anne  Suffield  coming  in  just  then  said  Guen  had  gone 
upstairs  to  work. 

"Oh,  Lord!"  said  Caryl,  as  though  she  thought  something 
ought  to  be  done  about  it.  "I  thought  the  new  book  was  to 
be  pleasant?" 

"Why  shouldn't  it  be?" 

"Oh,  no  reason,"  said  Caryl.  But  the  look  she  gave  Allan 
said  quite  plainly  that  she  didn't  believe  you  could  write 
anything  pleasant  while  you  felt  violently  sick  somewhere 
inside.  When  life  made  you  retch  it  wasn't  a  pen  you  wanted 
in  your  hand.  That,  Caryl  thought,  was  where  the  writers 
of  to-day  made  their  mistake.  They  would  write  about  life 
just  when  life  was  making  them  sick,  and  as  if  that  weren't 
enough  they  called  the  result  Realism.  Literature  was  a 
thoroughly  depressing  subject — an  unending  procession  of 
Shropshire  Lads  and  Judes  the  Obscure  and  Widows  in  Bye- 
Streets — just  as  though  nothing  pleasant  had  ever  happened 
to  anybody  at  all,  as  though  war  and  death  and  misery  were 
all  that  life  had  to  offer  you.  And  it  wasn't,  it  wasn't.  .  .  . 
Even  with  her  mother's  face,  shut  like  a  flower,  before  her  and 
with  Leader's  mournful,  questioning  eyes,  she  knew  it  wasn't. 
Life  was  something  far  more  than  the  mere  things  which  hap- 
pen to  you.  Its  springs  went  deep  down,  its  meaning — and 
Caryl  did  not  doubt  it  had  a  meaning — must  be  sought  inside 
yourself.  She  had  an  awkward  wayward  genius  for  seeing  life 
as  a  boon  whatever  it  did  to  you:  but  even  Caryl  knew  that 
there  were  times  when  she  ought  to  have  the  decency  to  forget 
it.  Yet  even  to-night,  over  some  trigonometry  problem  that 
was  eluding  solution,  the  old  thought  was  running  through  her 
brain.  "I  don't  want  to  miss  anything  that's  coming  to  me. 
I'll  never  be  sorry  whatever  it  is!"  Once  she  had  said  some- 
thing like  that  to  Jan,  and  Jan  had  laughed.  "Oh,  you!"  he 
said.  "Good  Lord,  yes.  You'd  think  it  a  privilege  to  break 
a  front  tooth." 

The  recollection,  somehow,  and  the  wound  that  it  made, 
drew  her  nearer  to  life.  Her  heart  melted  in  passionate  pity 
because  death,  like  a  gigantic  broom,  had  swept  Jan  out  of  the 
house  of  life,  so  that  nothing  that  happened  in  it  mattered  to 
him  any  longer.  He  was  dead  and  missing  everything;  the 
fierce,  exquisite  things  of  joy  and  pain,  the  look  of  the  cool, 
dark  night,  the  ecstasy  of  the  new  days  that  were  moving  out 


INTRUSION  77 

in  long  procession  over  the  hill  of  the  future.  Nothing  ever 
again  would  happen  to  Jan.  He  had  passed  on  out  of  reach, 
and  life,  moved  neither  to  pity  nor  regret,  swung  by,  implacable. 
And  Caryl — fighting  down  the  sobs  that  climbed  up  in  her 
throat — sat  there  and  watched  it 


CHAPTER    EIGHT 


THEY  had  silenced  Mrs.  Hill:  but  they  had  not  silenced 
Roberta.  Her  letters  went  on.  Not  that  Guen  realised 
whom  they  were  from.  She  had  left  the  perusal  of 
Jan's  correspondence  to  Allan,  and  he  did  not  tell  her.  Always 
he  read  Roberta's  letters  and  tore  them  up;  always  he  threw  at 
Guen  the  same  formula:  "Nothing  important."  Yet  some- 
thing about  the  handwriting  struck  her  as  familiar. 

And  then  she  found  out  why.  Hunting  for  brown  paper, 
she  came  across  the  piece  Roberta  had  used  when  returning 
Guen's  clothes:  "Miss  Suffield,  Mount  Calm,  Teddington." 
Roberta's  handwriting.  There  it  was — the  same  ugly  capitals, 
the  same  indecision  about  the  "e"  and  the  "i"  in  Suffield. 
She  wondered  why  Allan  should  have  made  such  a  secret  of  it. 
Why  shouldn't  he  have  told  her  that  Jan  had  kept — that — up? 
Jan  wouldn't  forget  a  face  as  pretty  as  Roberta's.  Besides, 
what  did  it  matter — now — how  much  or  how  little  he  had 
"kept  it  up"?  It  never  occurred  to  her  that  Allan,  too,  had 
"kept  it  up"  (even  as  little  as  he  had) ;  but,  for  all  that,  she 
found  herself  worrying  at  intervals  during  the  day  how  the 
subject  might  be  broached  that  evening  when  Allan  came  home 
to  dinner  or  whether  it  were  best  not  broached  at  all. 

But  Allan  did  not  come  home  that  evening  to  dinner.  He 
wired  that  business  detained  him.  The  "business,"  as  it  hap- 
pened, took  him  to  Highgate — found  him  knocking,  with  a 
beating  heart,  at  Number  two-hundred-and-two  Manningtree 
Avenue. 


He  had  fought  all  day  against  his  sudden  decision  to  see 
Roberta.  Why  shouldn't  he  write?  The  only  thing  that  mat- 
tered was  that  her  notes  to  Jan  should  cease — that  she  should 

78 


INTRUSION  79 

know  that  Jan's  need  for  her  letters,  if  it  had  ever  existed 
at  all,  existed  no  longer. 

But  was  that  all?  Allan  knew  that,  somehow,  it  wasn't, 
that  he  wanted  to  see  her  again;  wanted  to  see  how  she  took 
this  news  of  Jan's  death.  Something  brutal  and  savage  within 
him  urged  him  to  confront  her  with  it.  He  wanted  to  know 
just  how  much  there  had  been  between  Roberta  and  Jan,  and 
had  an  idea  that  just  by  seeing  how  she  took  it  he  would 
know — all  there  was  to  know.  And  he  had  to  know — whether 
Jan  had  been  her  lover  or  not ! 

It  was  extraordinary  that  he  should  care  like  that.  He  told 
himself  that  but  for  the  arrival  of  her  notes  to  Jan  (Jan  who 
was  dead  and  cold  in  his  grave)  he  would  have  "got  over 
it" — whatever  "it"  was.  He  would  certainly  not  have  called 
it  "love."  But  she  had  for  him  some  sort  of  deep  physical 
attraction  that  had  been  disturbing,  partly  because  he  had 
never  experienced  it  before  and  partly  because,  apart  from  her 
youth  and  vigour  and  sheer  animal  spirits,  she  bored  him  to 
death.  But  the  things  that  attracted  him  were  irresistible: 
he  could  not  imagine  Roberta  tired  or  worried  or  ill.  She  did 
not  belong  to  the  tiny  minority  who  hurl  themselves  against 
life  as  against  a  brick  wall,  and  Allan  did.  Life  for  her  was  a 
stream  in  which  she  dabbled  her  feet,  and  the  very  look  of  her 
there,  strolling  lazily,  barefoot,  was  somehow  unspeakably 
delightful.  That,  perhaps,  was  the  secret  of  it. 

Allan  had  never  known  anybody  who  infected  him  with  that 
sense  of  pleasure,  of  light-heartedness.  Certainly  Madeleine 
had  never  done  anything  of  the  sort.  Their  friendship  had 
always,  in  a  sense,  "taken  it  out  of  them."  They  could  infect 
each  other  with  their  moods,  with  their  despondencies  and 
despairs.  They  hated  the  same  things  about  life  and  with  the 
same  intensity;  sought  for  life's  meaning  with  the  same  per- 
sistency and  failed  always  to  find  it.  They  found,  indeed, 
nothing  but  facts.  And  from  facts  you  were  curiously  defence- 
less. If  you  couldn't  bear  them  you  shut  yourself  away  from 
them,  as  Maurice  Linton  had  done.  Maurice  had  been  afraid 
of  facts,  and  facts  eventually  had  killed  him.  But  Roberta 
never  looked  at  facts  more  than  she  could  help:  certainly  she 
never  allowed  them  to  worry  her.  However  it  was,  Allan  was 
beyond  question  intrigued  by  her  trick  of  seeing  a  brick  wall 
as  a  summer  stream.  It  was  an  amiable  trick,  though  other 


8o  INTRUSION. 

girls  had  had  it  beside  Roberta:  but  unfortunately  Roberta  was 
the  first  girl  Allan  had  ever  really  looked  at.  And  because  he 
was  tired  and  disheartened  he  was  in  the  mood  to  find  her  and 
her  trick  absurdly  attractive — on  the  principle  that  one  admires 
all  the  things  one  has  not  and  is  not.  The  mood  did  not  include 
a  vision  of  the  other  moods  when  the  people  who  persist  in 
regarding  a  brick  wall  as  a  stream  are  apt  to  get  on  your  nerves; 
nor  realisation  of  the  fact  that  Roberta's  complete  lack  of 
imagination  was  the  real  attraction  to  one  who  had  been  born 
with  to  much. 

There  remained  the  towing-path  incident  with  that  boy 
Ancell — and  this  friendship  with  Jan.  The  Ancell  incident,  of 
itself,  might  well  be  nothing:  but  as  evidence  of  Character  it 
was  damning.  The  rigid,  austere  Puritan  that  was  buried 
beneath  the  opulence  of  Allan's  temperament  rose  up  in  sternest 
disapproval.  But,  for  all  that,  there  was  something  that  opposed 
the  harsh  judgment  and  the  stern  Puritan  who  delivered  it,  as 
though  it  understood  that  Roberta  "picked  up"  her  male 
acquaintances  not  because  she  was  wicked,  but  because  she  was 
a  fool.  The  windows  of  her  mind  opened  to  one  side  only  of 
life:  she  did  not  know  that  the  other  windows  had  any  view 
at  all.  .  .  . 

On  the  whole,  it  seemed  that  the  incident  of  the  towing- 
path  and  the  things  it  connoted  counted  with  Allan  for  but 
little.  The  things  which  disturbed  him  were  all  mixed  up  with 
Jan,  and  it  was  they  that  had  sent  him  knocking  at  Roberta's 
door.  That  much  Allan  would  have  acknowledged.  What  he 
would  not  have  acknowledged  was  the  longing  to  see  her  again. 
.Yet  that,  really,  was  what  it  came  down  to. 


The  door  of  two-hundred-and-two  was  opened  presently  by  a 
stout  woman  who  wore,  with  other  things,  a  coloured  apron  and 
an  air  of  surprise,  as  though  Allan  was  not  at  all  the  person 
she  had  expected  to  find  on  her  doorstep.  She  had  Roberta's 
hazel  eyes,  and  beneath  the  flush  of  the  over-stout  woman  some 
hint  of  Roberta's  fine  skin  was  perceptible.  But  somehow, 
even  here  in  inaction  she  gave  you  the  sense  that  she  was  in  a 
terrific  hurry.  To  Allan  it  seemed  ridiculous  in  a  person  of 
her  bulk. 


INTRUSION  8 1 

"Miss  Leigh,"  he  said.     "Is  she  at  home?" 

"Come  in,"  said  the  woman,  and  shut  the  door  after  Allan 
with  that  devastating  air  of  having  not  a  moment  to  lose. 
Allan  wiped  his  boots,  somewhat  unnecessarily,  for  the  streets 
were  white  and  dry,  while  the  woman  went  to  a  descending 
staircase  and  called  down  it: 

"Berta !     Here's  someone  to  see  you." 

Her  voice  was  a  contradiction  of  her  size.  It  was  querulous 
and  thin,  as  though  begging  you  to  believe  that  her  corpulence 
was  not  natural,  but  an  outrageous  accident  which  had  over- 
taken her.  Before  Allan  could  recover  from  the  surprise  of  it 
its  owner  precipitated  him  into  the  front  room  and  with 
ridiculous  speed  produced  a  light. 

"My  daughter's  been  washing  her  hair,  so  you  mustn't  mind 
if  she  keeps  you  waiting  a  bit.  What  name  is  it,  sir?" 

"Sumeld!"  said  Allan. 

Mrs.  Leigh  had  heard  the  name.  Yes,  of  course,  the  gentle- 
man from  Teddington.  Roberta  had  often  talked  of  him,  and 
she  was  so  grateful  to  Miss  Sumeld  for  lending  Roberta  a 
change  that  wet  day — in  October,  wasn't  it? 

"Oh  .  .  .  don't  mention  it!"  said  Allan,  who  was  nervous 
and  inattentive,  and  only  realised  that  Mrs.  Leigh  was  in  a 
hurry  and  that  he  (or  his  family)  was  being  thanked  for  some- 
thing. 

"I'll  go  and  hurry  her  up." 

That,  you  felt,  was  her  mission  in  life — to  hurry  people  up! 
On  this  occasion,  at  least,  Allan  thought  it  was  a  mission  which 
should  be  encouraged. 

"If  you  would,  please,"  he  said,  wanting  fervently  to  get 
the  interview  over  and  be  gone. 

Mrs.  Leigh  went  out — with  the  air  of  one  whose  motto  in 
life  is  "No  time  to  be  lost  and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost." 
Even  in  the  midst  of  his  sudden  and  desperate  shyness  Allan 
wanted  to  laugh:  he  felt  very  tired,  as  if  she  had  robbed  him 
of  his  own  share  of  energy.  He  sat  there  on  the  edge  of  a 
chair  and  stared  about  the  room,  not  seeing  much,  save  that 
it  was  ugly  and  that  there  was  no  fire  in  the  grate.  It  seemed 
ages  before  Roberta  came  in. 

He  awoke  to  a  sense  of  her  standing  in  the  doorway  with  a 
loose  mane  of  hair  about  her  face,  out  of  which,  as  her  eyes 
dwelt  upon  him,  some  of  the  brightness  faded. 


32  INTRUSION 

"Oh  .  .  ."  she  began.     "It's  you.  .  .  ." 

He  was  suddenly  appalled  by  the  fact  of  his  own  presence 
there.  Afterwards  he  supposed  they  must  have  shaken  hands; 
but  he  had  no  recollection  of  it.  His  emotions,  so  far  as  he 
could  disentangle  them,  were  those  of  pity  and  remorse.  The 
savage  instinct  that  had  sent  him  there  deserted  him,  leaving 
him  sadly  and  unexpectedly  open  to  attack.  And  he  was 
nervous  and  didn't  know  how  to  begin. 

"Well,"  said  Roberta,  "and  what  do  I  owe  the  pleasure  of 
this  visit  to?" 

The  emotion  induced  in  Allan  by  the  masses  of  Roberta's 
wonderful  hair  got  queerly  mixed  up  with  the  wish  that  she 
would  learn  to  put  her  prepositions  in  their  proper  place,  but 
before  he  could  find  anything  to  say  she  had  noticed  the  black 
band  on  his  grey  overcoat.  As  she  sat  there  on  the  sofa  he 
saw  the  coquettish,  seductive  air  drop  from  her;  the  exquisite 
colour  creep  back  from  her  clear  skin.  In  that  instant  she  was 
blanched  to  the  lips:  nothing  of  the  brilliant  colour  that  had 
flamed  up  at  him  was  left  save  the  red-gold  of  her  hair — and 
that,  somehow,  intensified  the  etiolation  of  the  rest.  After  all, 
it  wasn't  going  to  be  necessary  to  say  anything.  Roberta  under- 
stood. He  stood  there  wondering  why  it  was  he  had  been  so 
certain  he  would  read  what  he  wanted  to  know  in  her  face. 
It  said  so  much,  that  blanched,  pathetic  countenance,  or  so 
little,  and  whatever  it  was  he  couldn't  read  it.  Any  girl  would 
have  looked  like  that  if  you  had  told  her  brutally  that  a  man 
she  had  gone  about  with  had  been  dead  and  buried  for  a 
fortnight.  It  was  the  look  of  youth  that,  scarcely  knowing  that 
death  existed,  had  been  suddenly  confronted  with  its  handi- 
work. .  And  because  the  look  hurt  him  atrociously  Allan  hastened 
to  soften  the  blow.  But  his  words  seemed  peculiarly  meaning- 
less: he  made  an  effort  to  galvanize  them  into  significance. 
"You  knew,"  he  said,  "that  he  always  had  a  weak  heart?" 

Roberta  said,  miserably,  that  she  did.  She,  too,  seemed  to 
plunge  after  the  meaning  of  words.  "He  used  to  laugh  about 
it,"  she  said,  then  suddenly  she  broke  down  and  cried,  her  face 
buried  in  the  muslin  cushions  of  the  sofa.  There  was  some- 
thing in  her  crying  which  both  hurt  and  angered  Allan;  and, 
more  than  that,  he  was  afraid  that  downstairs  they  would  hear 
and  come  in  to  see  what  was  wrong.  To-night  he  couldn't  bear 
a  scene.  If  anyone  came  in  he  would  turn  and  rush  out  of  the 


INTRUSION  83 

house.  He  sat  down  on  the  sofa  and  wondered  if  Guen's  visit 
to  Parson's  Green  had  been  like  this.  He  was  unspeakably 
wretched.  After  an  interval  he  leaned  forward  and  touched 
Roberta's  shoulder. 

"Don't  cry,"  he  said,  "please,  don't  cry!"  He  hadn't 
imagined,  somehow,  that  she  could.  It  was  unbearable,  but 
it  went  on.  His  anger  choked  down  the  hurt  of  it. 

"Stop  crying  like  that!"  he  commanded  her.  "Stop  it  at 
once!  Do  you  want  the  whole  household  to  come  in?" 

To  his  surprise  she  did  stop  and  sat  up  limply  from  the 
cushions. 

"I  don't  care,"  she  said.   "I  don't  care  about  anything!" 

"Why  don't  you  care  about  anything?" 

She  looked  sulky  and  her  mouth  trembled.  Her  hand 
rested  upon  the  back  of  the  sofa,  and  Allan  put  his  upon  it. 
He  sat  quite  still,  watching  her,  seeing  the  stormy  heaving  of 
her  little  firm  breast  and  the  trembling  of  the  red,  dimpled 
mouth.  To  Allan  breathing  had  become  an  almost  painful 
affair. 

"Why  don't  you  care  about  anything?"  he  repeated.  His 
voice  was  purposely  dull  and  toneless. 

She  pulled  her  hand  free. 

"What's  the  use  ?  The  people  you  like  always  die  or  go  away 
or  like  other  people  better  than  you  ...  or  something." 

"You  .  .  .  were  fond  of  my  brother?" 

She  nodded. 

"Very  fond?" 

Again  the  nod. 

"How  fond?" 

"What  d'you  mean,  how  fond?" 

"Just  that." 

"I  suppose  you  mean  would  I  have  married  him  if  he'd 
asked  me?" 

"He  wouldn't  have  asked  you.  Jan  was  not  the  'marrying' 
sort.  Hadn't  you  discovered  that?" 

"P'raps  I  had.     I  can  look  after  myself,  thank  you." 

"Can  you?" 

"Of  course  I  can.  .  .  .  I'm  not  that  sort,  anyhow." 

"Which  sort?" 

"Oh,  don't  think  I  don't  know  what  you  meant.  The  Mrs. 
Hill  sort " 


84  INTRUSION 

"Then  you  know  about  Mrs.  Hill?" 

"Of  course  I  know.  .  .  .  And  about  the  others,  too.  .  .  ." 
She  looked  sulky  again:  her  fingers  plucked  at  the  crumpled 
muslin  cushions. 

"And  you  didn't  mind?" 

"What  was  the  good  of  minding?  He  was  that  sort  .  .  . 
only  it  doesn't  matter  if  you're  a  man.  Everybody  liked  him 
.  .  .  and  he  liked  everybody,  pretty  nearly.  I  wanted  him  to  like 
me  best.  He  didn't.  He  said  I  had  old-fashioned  ideas.  .  .  . 
He  used  to  call  me  a  Puritan.  .  .  .  But  he  was  good  to  me, 
though." 

"How  'good'?" 

"He  took  me  about  ...  to  theatres  and  dances.  He  was 
awfully  generous  with  his  money.  .  .  ." 

"Go  on." 

She  drew  herself  up,  sharply  and  suddenly  on  the  defensive. 

"I  shan't,"  she  said.     "What's  it  got  to  do  with  you?" 

"Nothing.    But  I  mean  to  know." 

"I  suppose  you  think  you're  very  clever?"  she  said,  looking 
not  at  him,  but  at  her  fingers,  which  fidgeted  with  the  lace 
edge  of  the  muslin  cushions. 

"Not  very,"  he  said.  His  hand  came  down  again  on  hers. 
"What  else?  Theatres  and  dances  .  .  .  and  kisses?" 

"I  never  said  so." 

"They  go  together." 

"What  if  they  do?" 

"Theatres  and  dances  and  kisses.     Was  that  all?" 

He  saw  the  colour  come  up  just  beneath  her  ear,  spread  over 
her  neck  and  up  into  her  cheek.  "I  hate  you !"  she  hissed  at 
him,  and  suddenly  he  laughed  on  a  queer  high  note  of  relief. 
His  hand  left  her  hand,  slid  up  the  arm  and  turned  her  round 
by  her  shoulder.  Some  new  queer  sensation  was  awake  in  him, 
overpoweringly  alert.  His  whole  being  stood  poised  upon  the 
edge  of  some  new  emotion.  It  seemed  as  if  he  must  topple 
Over  the  edge  and  be  swamped. 

"Do  you?"  he  said,  his  mouth  very  near  to  Roberta's. 

He  felt  her  go  limp  in  his  arms.  The  effect  upon  him  was 
like  a  douche  of  cold  water. 

"All  right!"  he  said,  pushing  her  away.  "I'm  not  going  to 
kiss  you." 

She  fell  back,  looking  limp  and  stupid,  on  the  crumpled 


INTRUSION  85 

muslin  cushions.  He  hated  her.  And  he  no  longer  wanted 
to  kiss  her.  That  lax  yielding  of  her  body  to  his  arms  had 
killed  the  desire  in  him.  He  got  up  and  picked  up  his  hat  and 
stick,  despising  her.  She  was  a  fool :  she  cared  only  about  men 
and  their  flattery — any  man  who  wasn't  a  freak.  He  felt  that 
never  so  long  as  he  lived  could  he  bear  to  see  her  again. 

"Good-bye,"  he  said,  and  walked  away  to  the  door.  But 
he  did  not  open  it,  for  Roberta,  instead  of  speaking,  fell  sud- 
denly to  crying  again.  He  saw  the  tears  falling  between  her 
fingers  and  the  red  mark  his  hands  had  made  on  her  wrist. 
He  couldn't  bear  it.  Putting  down  his  stick  and  hat,  he  came 
nearer.  "Oh,  don't,"  he  said,  "I'm  so  sorry!" 

She  looked  up  after  a  while,  dabbing  at  her  eyes. 

"You  .  .  .  were  horrid,"  she  said. 

"I  know.  .  .  .  But  I  couldn't  help  it.  I  imagined  .  .  .  beastly 
things.  ...  I  had  to  know." 

"Why?"  she  asked. 

"I  can't  tell  you.  .  .  .  Don't  think  about  it  any  more." 

"I'm  so  miserable,"  she  said. 

He  came  and  sat  down  at  her  side. 

"Don't  be  miserable  any  more.  .  .  ."  He  took  her  hands  and 
held  them.  "Don't  you  think  you  could  forgive  me  and  let  us 
be  friends?" 

She  nodded.  He  wasn't  Jan,  but — he  was  alive.  And  Jan 
was  dead.  She  would  never  see  him  again.  The  thought  bit 
through  the  thinness  of  her  soul  and  filled  her  with  profound 
self-pity,  so  that  her  tears  almost  came  back.  But  not  quite — 
for  it  was  unwise  to  make  your  eyes  really  red,  however  miser- 
able you  were.  So  she  went  on  dabbing  at  her  eyes  and  appeared 
to  be  considering  Allan's  proposal  of  friendship. 

"All  right,"  she  said  presently  and  quite  casually.  But  then 
she  felt  casual  about  him.  The  only  person,  if  it  came  to  that, 
about  whom  she  hadn't  felt  casual  was  dead.  Nothing  mattered. 

The  look  she  gave  Allan  was  sombre  and  a  little  uncertain, 
for  she  was  afraid  she  had  made  her  eyes  red,  after  all.  They 
ached,  and  so  did  her  head.  She  felt  a  sight  and  wished  Allan 
would  go. 

And  soon  he  did.  It  came  to  him  suddenly  that  he  must  go 
at  once,  and  his  farewell  was  made  with  some  of  the  precipi- 
tancy with  which  Mrs.  Leigh  had  shown  him  in,  and  compli- 
cated by  that  lady's  unexpected  appearance  in  the  doorway 


.86  INTRUSION 

with  cocoa  on  a  tray  and  an  invitation  to  partake  of  it  on  her 
lips.  His  gesture  seemed  to  be  refusing  it  and  Roberta  and  the 
ugly  little  household  altogether.  He  must  get  away.  He 
murmured  something  about  a  train  and  found  himself  a  moment 
or  so  later  in  the  street,  where  the  moonlight  chequered  the 
dingy  houses  into  queer  new  shapes  of  black  and  white.  His 
heart  beat  rapidly,  his  face  and  hands  were  hot.  Thoughts 
raced  after  him:  he  was  tremendously  excited,  uplifted.  .  .  . 

He  burrowed  presently  and  went  down  to  the  tube.  On  the 
platform  was  a  Hilmer  Roydon  advertisement,  and  Allan  found 
himself  looking  at  it  with  fresh  interest.  Even  here,  denuded 
of  its  colouring,  the  face  was  exquisite.  More  than  that,  it  did, 
somehow,  suggest  that  there  was  something — a  good  deal — 
behind  it.  It  didn't  look  just  a  mask.  Perhaps  it  wasn't. 
Perhaps  it  was  only  that  Roberta  had  never  had  a  chance.  He 
didn't  quite  know  what  he  meant  by  the  phrase,  but  it  exon- 
erated Roberta  for  her  lack  of  brains  and,  in  a  way,  explained 
himself  to  himself,  which  certainly  did  seem  to  be  necessary. 
Also  it  definitely  took  her  out  of  the  rather  vague  crowd  of 
Allan's  acquaintances  and  put  her  into  that  tiny  group  in 
which  was  his  mother,  Pen  and  Caryl,  who  had,  in  one  respect 
at  least,  to  be  "protected."  Roberta,  too,  wanted  protecting — 
from  herself  and  her  lack  of  "chance,"  and  her  surroundings 
and  her  curious  assumption  that  the  only  things  that  mattered 
in  life  were  her  own  pretty  face  and  the  having  of  a  "good 
time."  Allan  did  not  know  that  he  was  putting  it  as  definitely 
as  all  that :  but  he  certainly  was.  He,  who  wanted  passionately 
to  remould  the  world,  wanted  also — if,  at  this  stage,  less  pas- 
sionately— to  remould  Roberta,  so  that  the  things  she  did  and 
said  no  longer  contradicted  her  face,  or  her  face,  perhaps,  no 
longer  contradicted  the  things  she  said  and  did.  Neither  was 
it  likely  that  his  failure  with  the  world  would  in^any  way  deter 
him  from  attempting  the  reformation  of  Roberta,  though  Guen 
could  have  told  him  that  the  task  was,  if  anything,  more  dif- 
ficult. But  there  at  the  beginning,  when  she  might  have  hoped 
to  convince  him,  she  did  not  even  know  he  was  thinking  of 
attempting  it. 

Neither  did  Allan.  Down  there  in  the  tube  he  sat  opposite 
a  row  of  faces  which  succeeded  presently  in  blotting  out  the 
much  more  pleasing  one  of  Roberta's.  In  so  far  as  the  faces 
were  features  Allan  might,  perhaps,  have  said  they  were  dif- 


INTRUSION  87 

ferent:  but  in  so  far  as  he  saw  them  as  faces  (mere  expressions) 
he  saw  them  all  as  exactly  similar.  For  they  wore  that  curi- 
ously blank  stare  of  complacency  that  tube-travelling  seems  to 
engender.  They  looked  out,  every  one  of  those  faces,  on  a  dull 
world  to  which  they  were  used  and  in  which  nothing  ever  really 
happened.  Allan  wanted  to  laugh  because  all  these  people 
were  half  dead  without  knowing  it.  It  was  so  funny,  that 
thought.  .  .  . 

Before  he  reached  home,  however,  his  excitement  had  died 
away.  Nothing  whatever  would  have  moved  him  to  laughter. 
A  sense  of  frustration  and  loneliness  was  upon  him.  Beneath 
the  moon,  that  still  cut  up  the  houses  into  fantastic  shapes, 
his  face  was  white  and  tired — very  like  the  faces  he  had  wanted 
to  laugh  at  in  the  tube. 


CHAPTER   NINE 


WHAT  followed  for  Allan  was  like  nothing  at  all. 
He  was  torn,  all  the  time,  between  conflicting 
emotions.  He  did  ridiculous  things,  was  saved, 
miraculously,  from  doing  others  much  more  ridiculous.  He 
wandered  up  to  Hilmer  Roydon's  studio,  hung  about  outside 
because  he  hadn't  sufficient  courage  to  go  in,  wondered,  at 
seven  o'clock,  if  he  had  missed  Roberta,  and  went  home.  The 
thought  of  her  was  a  torture  that  kept  him  from  work  and 
sapped  his  energy.  A  distorted  and  unreal  week  went  by,  and 
then  one  day  he  rang  up  the  studio,  enquired  for  Miss  Leigh 
and  learned  that  she  had  been  away  three  days  with  influenza. 
A  sort  of  panic  seized  upon  Allan  as  he  listened;  he  asked  for 
particulars  in  a  peremptory  fashion,  in  a  queer,  excited  voice 
he  found  it  difficult  to  control.  At  six  o'clock,  when  he  left 
the  City,  he  went  over  to  Highgate,  stopping  en  route  to  buy 
a  bunch  of  spring  flowers  that  looked  out  at  him  from  a  florist's 
window.  The  tube  was  crowded,  and  he  wondered  why  the 
flowers  made  him  feel  such  a  fool  and  why  people  looked  at 
him  as  though  it  was  an  unheard  of  thing  for  a  young  man  to 
be  seen  abroad  with  such  a  bouquet. 

He  was  not  allowed  to  see  Roberta,  who  was  still  in  bed  and 
the  proud  possessor  of  a  temperature;  but  Mrs.  Leigh  relieved 
him  of  his  flowers  with  a  gesture  that  had  all  the  force  of  a 
snatch  without  its  rudeness,  and  promised  to  deliver  any  mes- 
sage. Allan  found  it  difficult  to  reduce  his  emotion  to  words. 
What  was  it  he  wanted  to  say  to  Roberta,  save  that  he  couldn't 
keep  away  from  her  and  that  he'd  been  panic-stricken  when 
he  heard  of  her  illness  over  the  phone?  Obviously  this  was 
not  the  sort  of  thing  to  retail  to  Roberta — certainly  not 
through  the  medium  of  her  mother.  He  said  something  banal 
and  idiotic,  and  withdrew. 

Two  days  later,  on  the  Saturday,  he  called  again.    It  was  a 


INTRUSION  89 

fine,  warm  day  after  a  heavy  fall  of  snow  in  the  early  morning. 
Roberta  was  up  and  lying  on  the  sofa  in  the  dingy  little 
drawing-room  of  number  two-hundred-and  two.  She  did  not 
look  very  ill — a  little  paler,  perhaps,  and  with  an  invalid's  trick 
of  languor  and  half-closed  eyes  and  soft  tones.  It  seemed  to 
Allan  that  he  stood  for  an  hour  in  the  doorway,  looking  at  her, 
trying  to  smile,  feeling  as  if  something  had  happened  to  the 
muscles  of  his  face  and  to  his  legs.  Neither  would  respond  to 
his  bidding. 

He  found  himself  presently  inside  the  room,  shaking  hands 
in  his  shy  fashion  and  hoping  she  was  better.  He  never  remem- 
bered much  that  they  said :  he  had  an  idea  that  they  said  very 
little;  but  gradually  his  shyness  left  him.  He  looked  about 
him,  saw  that  they  had  dumped  his  flowers  ungracefully  in  an 
ugly  vase  on  a  small  table  in  the  window,  and  that  the  pictures 
and  the  looking-glass  had  evidently  been  hung  by  a  very  tall 
man  with  a  slightly  crooked  eye.  Later  Roberta's  mother  came 
in  to  lay  tea.  With  a  velocity  that  took  your  breath  away  she 
moved  the  hideous  vase  containing  Allan's  bouquet  on  to  the 
piano,  hurled  the  table  into  the  middle  of  the  room  and  pro- 
ceeded to  dispose  her  cups  and  saucers  with  all  the  noise  and 
fury  of  a  tornado.  Allan  found  her  energy  exhausting.  Why 
should  anybody  lay  tea  with  an  air  of  expecting  the  last  trump 
to  sound  before  she  could  get  it  finished? 

When  the  meal  was  over  the  door  opened  and  the  man  who 
had  evidently  hung  the  pictures  came  into  the  room.  "My 
father,"  said  Roberta,  and  Allan  wondered  how  it  was  she  had 
missed  being  like  either  of  her  parents,  but  was  glad  that  she 
had.  Mr.  Leigh  was  tall  and  spare,  with  a  kindly,  tired  face 
and  limp  movements,  as  though  his  wife  had  annexed  his 
energy  and  made  it  her  own.  That  was  how  Allan  thought  of 
her — as  a  woman  who  went  about  snatching  at  other  people's 
energy  as  some  others  snatch  at  stray  cats  and  umbrellas  and 
overcoats.  Roberta  and  her  father  (and  Allan  himself,  though 
he  was  not  aware  of  it)  had  an  air  of  warding  her  off.  It  was 
comic.  So,  in  a  way,  was  the  air  of  relief  with  which,  when 
his  wife  had  gone  out,  Mr.  Leigh  stood  by  the  fire  and  talked 
of  the  trouble  with  the  miners  and  railway  men,  and  the 
increased  bus  and  tram  fares  and  wondered  what  we  were 
coming  to.  Also,  he  grumbled  at  the  Government  and  at 
snow  in  March,  which,  Allan  gathered,  were  phenomena  quite 


90  INTRUSION 

beyond  him.  Later,  Mrs.  Leigh  bustled  in  again  and  decapi- 
tated an  interesting  conversation  about  the  proposed  tax  on 
bachelors.  The  head  of  the  talk  rolled  down  among  the  group 
of  three  and  broke  it  up.  Mr.  Leigh  drifted  out  of  the  room 
and  Allan  announced  that  he  must  be  going. 

Roberta  was  not  returning  to  work  until  the  Wednesday,  and 
Allan  promised  to  come  in  on  the  Tuesday  evening  if  Mrs. 
Leigh  would  allow  him.  Mrs.  Leigh  would. 

"Oh,  come  whenever  you  like,  young  man,"  she  said.  "I'll 
be  much  obliged  to  you.  You'd  be  doing  me  a  real  kindness 
if  you  could  keep  Roberta  at  home  a  bit.  I  never  saw  such  a 
girl  for  gadding  about.  I  might  as  well  never  have  had  a 
daughter  for  all  I  see  of  her.  And  it  isn't  as  if  she  isn't  allowed 
to  bring  her  friends  home." 

She  hustled  Allan  out  of  the  house  as  though  he  were  a 
dispatch  rider  on  some  forlorn  hope,  and  came  back  to  collect 
her  piled-up  tray. 

But  not  alone  for  that,  as  Roberta  saw  at  a  glance.  Her 
mother  had  something  to  say  and  was  not  going  to  be  prevented 
from  saying  it.  She  began.  Her  approval  of  Allan  was 
unqualified,  like  the  terms  which  she  employed  to  express  it. 
And  as  unending,  Roberta  thought.  She  looked  bored.  It  was 
an  expression  she  had  practised  very  carefully  before  the  glass, 
and  singularly  successful  with  everyone  save  her  mother.  Also, 
it  was  one  of  Hilmer  Roydon's  favourite  photographic  effects. 

"Oh,  mother,  do  be  quiet.  He's  all  right,  but  he's  not  a 
patch  on  his  brother." 

Mrs."  Leigh  stood  there  holding  the  loaded  tray  in  her  hands 
and  looking  down  at  her  daughter. 

"Well,  and  if  he  isn't!  His  brother's  dead — and  he'd  never 
have  married  you,  from  what  I  can  make  out  of  it,  neither. 
And  you'll  never  be  happy  until  you've  got  a  man  of  your  own." 

"But  I  don't  want  to  get  married  .  .  .  not  yet,  anyway.  (Do 
put  that  tray  down,  for  goodness'  sake!)  I  think  marriage  is 
rotten.  A  girl's  finished,  when  she's  married." 

"Is  she?  Well,  and  a  good  job,  my  lady,  when  you're 
'finished,'  as  you  call  it.  ...  I  tell  you,  I  shan't  have  any 
peace  of  mind  till  you're  safely  married  and  off  my  hands." 

Roberta  deepened  the  expression  of  boredom  on  her  face  and 
called  up  another,  less  successful;  to  keep  it  company. 

"I  think  you're  thoroughly  disgusting!"  she  said. 


INTRUSION  91 

"It  doesn't  matter  a  scrap  what  you  think  or  what  you  don't 
think,  Roberta.  Once  is  enough  of  that  sort  of  thing  in  a 
family,  thank  you." 

"Oh,  do  come  off  it,  mother.  It's  time  you  forgot  that  old 
affair.  I'm  not  Delia's  sort.  Besides,  I'm  tired  of  having  her 
pushed  down  my  throat." 

"Delia"  had  been  Delia  King  and  Roberta's  cousin.  Two 
years  ago  she  had  had  an  illegitimate  child  and  had  died  of  it. 
That,  probably,  was  the  most  considerate  thing  Delia  ever 
did  for  her  family.  But  her  aunt — Roberta's  mother — was 
ungrateful  even  for  that,  for  Roberta  and  Delia  had  been  too 
intimate  for  her  peace  of  mind.  If  it  were  not  such  a  very 
wise  mother  that  knows  her  own  child  Mrs.  Leigh  might  have 
known  Roberta;  might  have  understood  that,  although  Roberta 
shared '  the  extraordinary  prettiness  of  her  cousin  and  her 
equally  extraordinary  lack  of  brains,  she  shared  neither  her 
warmth  nor  her  generosity  of  nature.  It  was  these  things  which 
had  proved  Delia's  undoing,  and  from  them  Roberta  never 
stood  in  the  very  least  danger.  Nothing  whatever  swept 
Roberta  off  her  feet.  She  remained  always  cold  and  detached; 
her  feet  firmly  planted  on  the  right  side  of  conventional  moral- 
ity, from  whence  she  had  looked  across  at  Delia,  voting  her 
a  little  fool  and  the  thing  she  had  done  nasty  rather  than 
wicked.  Roberta  had  known  many  men,  but  had  never  gone 
down  into  the  jungle  of  their  desires.  She  did  not  live,  as 
Delia  had  done,  on  the  slippery  slopes  of  love.  Love,  indeed, 
was  not  a  thing  she  really  cared  about — or  understood.  She 
was  cold  all  through,  but  she  was  vain.  She  wanted  admira- 
tion and  amusement  and  excitement,  and  she  had  no  other 
means  of  procuring  them  than  through  her  own  delightful 
appearance.  Marriage  was  another  matter — and  more  difficult 
to  achieve.  It  had,  too,  certain  obvious  disadvantages  which 
disturbed  her  when  she  thought  of  them,  so  that  her  Prince 
Charming  tended  to  become  a  rather  incorporeal  figure,  whose 
hand  was  constantly  in  the  pocket  of  the  trousers  he  had  scarcely 
sufficient  body  to  need. 

But  Roberta's  mother  was  not  "wise"  and  she  did  not  know 
these  things  about  her  own  daughter.  She  "knew,"  actually, 
nothing  whatever  of  Roberta,  save  that  she  ought  to  be  mar- 
ried. She  had  a  vague  idea  that  it  would  take  a  husband  to 
keep  Roberta  in  order — "a  husband  and  babies"  was  how  the 


92  INTRUSION 

phrase  formed  itself  in  her  mind,  though  whether  or  not 
Roberta  would  keep  the  babies  in  order  was  another  matter. 
From  the  brilliant  marriage  that  had  included  a  motor-car 
and  a  houseful  of  servants  and  furniture,  Mrs.  Leigh  had  come 
to  desire  for  Roberta  any  marriage  at  all.  And  she  despaired 
because  even  that  didn't  seem  too  easy,  since  Roberta  would 
not  look  at  the  young  men  who  would  have  married  her,  and 
the  young  men  she  would  look  at  did  not  mean  marriage. 
Money  married  money,  position  gravitated  towards  position — 
that  much  was  mere  platitude,  and  Roberta  had  neither  money 
nor  position.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  London  warehouse- 
man and  earned  two  pounds  a  week  at  Hilmer  Roydon's  studio 
—of  which  Mrs.  Leigh  strongly  disapproved,  firstly  because 
Roberta  had  gone  there  to  make  appointments  and  write  out 
receipts  and  had  remained  to  be  photographed,  and  Mrs.  Leigh 
thought  it  couldn't  be  good  for  Roberta  to  be  photographed 
so  frequently  and  in  such  ridiculous  positions,  and  found  it 
disturbing  to  find  Roberta's  face  staring  out  at  her  from  the 
tube  lifts  and  platforms  whenever  she  was  minded  to  travel. 
And  secondly,  she  disapproved  of  the  studio  because  it  was 
there  Roberta  had  met  Tommy  Carew,  who  had  eventually 
left  to  go  "on  the  pictures."  Not  that  Mrs.  Leigh  believed 
that,  for  she  had  met  Miss  Carew — had  had  the  privilege 
of  entertaining  her  to  tea  one  day  and  of  calling  her  "common" 
the  next.  But  it  wasn't  her  "commonness"  to  which  Mrs. 
Leigh  objected  mainly,  but  her  good  looks,  which  she  consid- 
ered too  emphatic,  and  because  she  had  come  to  the  point  when 
distrust  of  "good  looks" — male  or  female — was  an  overpowering 
instinct. 

But  whilst  Allan's  lack  of  title  to  the  distinction  of  good 
looks  ingratiated  him  first  with  Roberta's  mother,  the  fact  that 
he  was  the  first  of  "Roberta's  young  men"  to  come  to  the 
house  certainly  reinforced  it.  That  he  had  done  so  staggered 
even  Roberta,  who  usually  said  of  the  young  man  she  affected 
that  of  course  she  "couldn't  bring  them  to  the  house,"  and 
perhaps  her  mother  knew  that  was  only  Roberta's  way  of  say- 
ing, "they  wouldn't  come  if  I  asked  them."  Roberta,  no  doubt 
about  it,  was  too  big  for  her  shoes.  She  threw  a  wide  net — 
and  caught  nothing.  And  sometimes,  with  Delia  and  her  story 
in  mind,  Mrs.  Leigh  ran  amok  and  Delia  was  made  into  a 
cat-o'-nine-tails  with  which  Roberta  was  mercilessly  afflicted. 


INTRUSION  93 

And  always  this  sort  of  scene  ensued.  Always  it  ended  with 
Roberta  in  tears  and  a  strained,  uncomfortable  atmosphere  for 
several  days. 

Roberta  wept  now.    But  her  mother  was  adamant 

"Now  you  can  just  stop  that,  Roberta,  and  find  something 
to  do.  You've  sat  there  polishing  your  nails  and  being  sorry 
for  yourself  and  goodness  knows  what  for  the  last  three  days. 
There's  a  pile  of  stockings  in  the  kitchen  to  be  mended  and 
they'll  give  you  something  to  occupy  your  mind." 

She  went  out  after  them  like  a  whirlwind,  and  Roberta  sobbed 
on  into  her  cushions.  She  wasn't  really  sure  what  she  was 
crying  about.  Perhaps  because  her  mother  had  "pushed  Delia 
down  her  throat"  again,  and  because  influenza,  even  a  mild 
attack,  makes  one  depressed;  but  most  of  all,  perhaps,  because 
she  hadn't  yet  got  used  to  the  fact  that  Jan  was  dead,  and  in 
her  shallow  way,  and  as  much  as  she  had  ever  cared  for  any- 
body, she  had  cared  for  Jan.  Besides,  Roberta  was  a  senti- 
mentalist :  it  was  the  nearest  she  ever  got  to  real  feeling. 

It  was  probably  true,  as  her  mother  had  said,  that  Jan  would 
never  have  married  her:  but  at  twenty-one  that  had  not  really 
bothered  her.  Some  day  or  other  she  supposed  she  would 
have  to  get  married,  but  she  meant  none  the  less  to  resist 
her  mother's  idea  of  marriage,  which  seemed  to  mean  the  keep- 
ing of  some  man's  house,  the  cooking  of  his  dinner  and  the 
mending  of  his  socks.  None  of  these  things  appealed  to 
Roberta.  There  were  a  good  many  things  that  didn't  appeal 
to  Roberta.  Marriage  (as  delineated  by  Miss  Carew)  was 
one  of  them,  which,  however,  she  was  prepared  to  endure  for 
the  sake  of  the  other  things  which  went  with  it — the  assured 
income  she  was  not  inconvenienced  to  earn,  and  the  comfortable 
home  in  which  the  work  was  not  done  by  her,  but  in  which 
she  moved  leisurely  in  pretty  frocks.  Seen  thus,  marriage  was 
a  quite  bearable  institution,  scarcely  disturbed  by  the  return 
at  seven  o'clock  of  that  incorporeal  Somebody  (with  a  bunch 
of  violets  or  a  box  of  chocolates)  who  kissed  her  and  said  how 
charming  she  looked.  He  never  omitted  that.  Roberta  liked 
men  to  have  nice  manners,  even  if  she  liked  them  to  have 
no  bodies — to  speak  of! 

It  didn't — Roberta's  view  of  marriage — run  to  babies. 

That  was  where  Mrs.  Leigh  might  have  saved  herself  a 
good  deal  of  worry.  It  was  quite  true,  though  her  mother 


94  INTRUSION 

never  knew  it,  that  Roberta  wasn't  "Delia's  sort."  She  was 
a  voluptuary — she  loved  bodily  ease  and  comfort  and  pretty 
clothes  and  good  food — but  sexually  she  was  cold.  Far  from 
regarding  sex  as  a  joke,  as  Tommy  Carew  did,  or  as  a  means  of 
expression  as  Delia  had  done,  she  regarded  it  as  one  of  the 
trials  of  existence,  a  thing  she  could  very  well  do  without. 
"I  think  all  that's  horrid,"  was  her  attitude,  and  for  it  she 
took  a  great  measure  of  personal  pride,  as  though  it  were  some- 
how a  tremendous  virtue.  Roberta  saw  herself  as  a  delicate 
creature  in  an  indelicate  world,  and  was  occasionally  sorry  for 
herself.  She  hated  her  mother,  as  she  had  hated  Allan,  for 
suggesting  that  she  had  the  ordinary  passions  of  humanity  and 
was  (or  had  been)  in  any  danger  of  submitting  to  them. 

In  its  own  way,  of  course,  it  was  funny,  though  Roberta 
was  in  no  immediate  danger  of  perceiving  it. 

Meanwhile  she  mended  her  stockings  and  Allan  rode  home 
on  the  top  of  a  bus  and  watched  the  coming  of  the  dark.  The 
moonlight  crept  up  over  the  houses  and  the  muffled  wings  of- 
night  beat  softly  about  him.  And  as  he  looked  down  over  the 
edge  of  night,  for  the  first  time  for  a  week  the  thought  of 
Roberta  slipped  out  of  his  mind. 


Tuesday  was  much  like  the  Saturday,  save  that  the  people 
upstairs  were  frying  fish  for  their  evening  meal,  which  was 
scarcely  an  improvement.  The  dingy  sitting-room  was  a  little 
less  dingy,  perhaps,  because  at  the  window  fresh  curtains  had 
appeared  over  which  trailed  a  pattern  of  queerly-shaped  leaves 
and  flowers  and  things  that  looked  like  beetles.  His  flowers 
were  still  on  the  table — looking  (and  probably  smelling  by 
now)  as  hideous  as  the  vase  in  which  they  stood.  For  the  rest, 
Roberta  reclined  as  gracefully  as  ever  on  the  couch  before  the 
fire  and  Mrs.  Leigh  dashed  in  and  out  of  the  room  like  a 
tornado.  And  once  Mr.  Leigh  came  in  and  talked  about  the 
first  issue  of  the  Daily  Herald,  and  the  marriage  of  Elizabeth 
Asquith,  and  the  collapse  of  a  warehouse  at  Liverpool — all  of 
which  things,  it  seemed,  happened  on  the  previous  day.  It 
dawned  presently  on  Allan  that  Roberta's  parents  were  bent  on 
not  leaving  them  alone  together  for  any  appreciable  length  of 
time.  The  conviction  somehow  disgusted  Allan,  and  his  disgust 


INTRUSION  95 

recoiled  upon  Roberta.  It  was  as  though  even  her  parents 
knew  she  was  not  to  be  trusted  with  men.  He  left  early  in 
an  abrupt  fashion,  feeling,  once  more,  that  he  never  wanted  to 
see  her  again. 

After  the  Tuesday  he  wore  himself  out  in  the  effort  to  keep 
away  from  her,  and,  though  he  haunted  the  door  of  Hilmer 
Roydon's  studio,  he  haunted  it  against  his  will — his  feet  drew 
him  towards  it  irresistibly,  so  that  his  will  went  for  nothing. 
But  at  least  he  gave  up  his  visits  to  Manningtree  Avenue.  He 
could  not  stand  the  atmosphere  of  that  terrible  little  sitting- 
room,  where,  beneath  the  watchful  eye  of  Roberta's  parents, 
he  felt  he  might  at  any  moment,  be  asked  to  "declare"  himself. 
Neither  did  Roberta  show  any  anxiety  to  have  him  there,  caring 
no  more  for  the  parental  eye  than  Allan,  to  whom,  somehow, 
it  never  once  occurred  to  take  Roberta  to  Teddington.  Besides, 
if  it  had,  Teddington  and  Highgate  were  so  far  apart. 

Presently,  however,  that  excuse  existed  no  longer,  for  the 
Canadian  family  suddenly  decided  to  go  home  by  the  next  boat 
and  the  Suffields  moved  back  again  to  Highgate. 


Alan  was  distressed,  when  he  came  to  think  of  it,  that 
during  this  period  he  had  forgotten  all  those  things  which  had 
happened  in  February.  He  had  forgotten  his  brother  (save 
when  he  remembered  him,  disastrously,  among  his  thoughts 
of  Roberta) ;  he  had  forgotten  his  mother  and  his  intention 
of  "making  things  up"  to  her.  Yet  when  he  had  time  to  remem- 
ber, it  seemed  to  him  that  his  mother  no  longer  needed  to 
have  things  "made  up"  to  her.  Almost,  indeed,  she  made  his 
solicitude  ridiculous.  There  was  something  about  her  that 
baffled  him,  but  when  he  forgot  that  he  was  strangely  affected 
by  the  dignity  and  quiet  with  which  she  had  taken  up  again 
the  threads  of  life,  had  gone  on  weaving  life's  pattern.  Weav- 
ing in  quieter  colours,  perhaps,  but  with  hope  and  high  cour- 
age. You  simply  couldn't  be  sorry  for  her  any  longer;  but 
Allan  and  Guen  were  glad  they  had  saved  her  from  the 
knowledge  they  had  buried  within  themselves. 

But  other  people  besides  Allan  were  occupied  just  now  with 
their  own  affairs.  There  was  Pen  with  her  month-old  baby 


96  INTRUSION 

(they  had  called  him  Arthur  Jannison) :  and  Caryl,  now  that 
the  fine  weather  was  coming  in,  was  week-ending  again  with 
the  Hestons  at  Wokingham.  Guen  was  in  bondage  to  her  new 
book  that  had  arrived  at  the  stage  when  it  seemed  just  a  string 
of  nouns,  verbs  and  conjunctions,  signifying  nothing.  This 
occurred  every  time  she  wrote  anything,  and  while  the  fit  lasted 
she  was  irritable  and  given  to  long  silences — and  longer  walks. 

It  was  the  time  for  walks.  The  sweet  young  months  were 
climbing  up  the  wall  of  the  year.  Young  April,  green  and 
gold  and  very  lovely,  looked  with  her  bright  face  over  the  wall, 
younger  May  at  her  heels.  The  country  shone  with  delicate 
tints,  like  a  pastel  drawing.  Laughing,  the  spring  winds  ran 
over  it  and  the  scent  of  the  spring  flowers.  On  the  Heath  the 
birds  sang;  there  were  buds  on  the  hawthorn  and  beech  trees, 
and  violets  hidden  in  the  woods.  And  on  Jan's  grave  the 
wallflowers  were  in  bloom.  .  .  . 

But  though  Allan's  home  now  lay  within  twenty  minutes' 
walk  of  Roberta's,  he  did  not  go  again  to  Manningtree  Avenue; 
neither  did  he  propose  that  Roberta  should  come  to  Adelaide 
Lodge.  To  ask  her  there  would  be  to  do  that  for  which  he 
felt  he  could  no  longer  go  to  Manningtree  Avenue;  it  would 
be,  in  effect,  a  declaration  of  his  position.  He  would  be 
virtually  engaged  to  Roberta,  or  at  least  that  was  how  it 
seemed  to  him.  He  couldn't  ask  her  to  come  home  with  him 
and  never  ask  her  to  be  engaged  to  him.  Yet  an  engagement, 
though  it  might  be  a  long  road,  had  marriage  at  the  end  of  it, 
and  he  did  not  want  to  marry  Roberta — neither  was  he  able  to 
keep  away  from  her.  The  position  seemed  to  him  to  be 
supremely  idiotic.  It  was,  but  he  would  have  felt  better  about 
it  if  he  had  known  that  most  young  men  had  found  them- 
selves in  similarly  idiotic  positions  not  once,  but  many  times 
before  they  had  arrived  at  Allan's  age.  Yet  he  remained  clear- 
sighted enough  about  Roberta.  He  was  still  a  little  contemptu- 
ous of  her,  seeing  her  after  these  weeks  of  acquaintanceship 
as  he  had  done  at  the  first,  as  the  girl  who  had  never  heard 
of  Emily  Bronte.  She  was  ignorant,  vain  and  egotistic.  She 
couldn't  think,  and  there  were  times  when  she  bored  him  pro- 
foundly. There  was  very  little  about  her  that  his  intellect 
approved  of,  and  his  intellect  was  annoyed  with  that  other 
part  of  him  which,  no  doubt  at  all  about  it,  approved  of  a  good 
deal,  of  all  the  things  which  formed  a  part  of  the  overwhelming 


INTRUSION  97 

effect  of  youth  and  vitality  which  she  had  upon  even  the  most 
casual  of  beholders. 

It  was  to  these  things  Allan  was  led  captive,  dodging  thought 
as  best  he  might,  but  in  no  mood  whatsoever  to  dodge  Roberta. 
Throughout  April  he  took  to  haunting  the  studio  door  again, 
and  each  time  he  made  an  appointment  for  some  evening  to 
come.  Generally  Roberta  kept  him  waiting,  and  sometimes 
it  was  worth  it  and  sometimes  it  was  not.  They  rode  on 
buses  to  Richmond  and  Kew  and  sat  in  the  park  or  by  the 
river:  or  they  strolled  over  the  Heath  or  went  down  to  Epping; 
and  sometimes  they  went  to  a  theatre  or  out  to  dinner,  which 
Roberta  liked  better,  because  she  was  not  over-fond  of  walking. 
She  wouldn't  be:  she  wore  the  wrong  kind  of  shoes. 

Here  in  the  early  spring  all  Allan's  spare  time  was  given  to 
Roberta.  Books,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  were  relatively 
unimportant.  By  the  middle  of  April  he  had  spent  a  good 
deal  of  money,  but  he  had  not  kissed  Roberta.  Roberta  (giving 
him  no  credit  at  all  for  self-control)  voted  him  dull  and 
disappointing,  and  began  to  make  excuses  when  he  asked  her 
to  go  out.  She  developed  an  abrupt  and  surprising  conscience 
over  what  she  called  her  "neglect"  of  Tommy  Carew,  at  whose 
flat  she  seemed  to  be  meeting  with  disturbing  regularity  a 
young  man  to  whom  she  referred  as  "Duggie,"  but  whose  name 
appeared,  upon  enquiry,  to  be  Douglas  Rayne.  Mr.  Rayne, 
it  further  appeared,  was  on  the  brink  of  deserting  the  tobacco 
business  for  the  cinema — hence,  probably,  his  friendship  with 
Tommy  Carew,  or,  much  more  probably,  hers  with  him.  Pres- 
ently, when  a  demon  of  jealousy  sprang  up  in  Allan,  Roberta 
showed  it  small  mercy.  At  the  times  of  its  worst  manifesta- 
tions she  would  beg  him  in  that  mincing  voice  which  got  so 
dreadfully  on  Allan's  nerves,  to  remember  that  there  were 
other  men  in  the  world — a  phenomenon  of  which  Allan  was 
only  too  acutely  and  uncomfortably  aware.  Also  (and  no  more 
comfortably)  he  was  aware  that  if  he  didn't  know  his  own 
mind  in  regard  to  Roberta  there  were  probably  other  men 
who  did,  and  it  was  absurd  to  blame  Roberta  for  knowing  it, 
too.  But  whilst  she  removed  herself  from  him  he  suffered.  He 
suffered  horribly. 

Presently,  however,  she  began  to  go  out  with  him  again,  and 
Tommy  Carew  slipped  a  little  into  the  background.  "Duggie," 
so  Allan  gathered,  was  going  over  to  America.  When  he  men- 


98  INTRUSION 

tioned  him  one  day  to  Roberta  she  became  evasive  and 
shrugged  her  shoulders  as  if  she  shrugged  Mr.  Rayne  not  only 
out  of  England,  but  off  the  map  altogether.  Mr.  Rayne,  it 
seemed  only  reasonable  to  suppose,  had  not  come  up  to  scratch. 
Anyway,  the  friendship  between  Allan  and  Roberta  took  a  new 
lease  of  life  just  when,  in  the  English  way,  Summer  suddenly 
descended  upon  a  world  that,  clad  still  in  its  Winter  garments, 
was  looking  optimistically  for  Spring. 

About  this  time,  too,  Guen's  new  book  suddenly  acquired  a 
meaning,  and  she  found  time  to  notice  that  something  was 
happening  to  Allan.  But  before  she  was  able  to  discover  what 
it  was  she  was  swept  off  to  Kent  to  look  at  a  house  Gore  had 
found  there,  so  that  in  the  end  it  was  quite  by  accident  that 
she  stumbled  on  the  fact  of  Allan's  friendship  with  Roberta. 
Coming  home  late  one  evening  she  encountered  them  at  the 
station,  and,  because  there  was  no  help  for  it,  Allan  took  the 
bold  course. 

"Guen,"  he  said,  "I  think  you  know  Miss  Leigh?" 

For  a  second,  in  Guen's  mind,  the  name  leapt  meaningless. 
Then  she  remembered.  That  day  in  October — and  those  three 
letters  to  Jan.  This,  then,  was  why  there  had  never  been  a 
fourth!  "Of  course,"  she  said.  "How  do  you  do,  Miss  Leigh?" 

When  Allan  came  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later  she  asked 
him  if  he  saw  much  of  Roberta. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I  do,"  Allan  said. 

"Do  you  find  her  interesting?" 

"Interesting?    Good  God,  she  bores  me  to  death!" 

"Then  why  see  quite  so  much  of  her?" 

"I  think  it's  only  one  side  of  me  that's  bored,  and  I  can't 
decide  whether  that's  the  important  side  or  not.  .  .  .  Oh,  I'm 
blest  if  I  know.  Do  you?" 

Guen  looked  at  him — a  soft,  penetrating  glance  with 
understanding  in  it  and,  perhaps,  a  little  regret. 

"I  think  I  do,"  she  said.    "But  it's  rather  a  pity,  isn't  it?" 

He  flashed  out  then  in  defence  of  Roberta.  She  had  never 
had  a  chance:  it  wasn't  her  fault  if  she  was  stupid.  .  .  . 

"Nor  your  mission  to  correct  it,"  said  Guen.  "Is  that  what 
you  think  you're  doing?" 

"Perhaps.  I  don't  know.  ...  I  think  I  try.  I  read  her  things, 
lend  her  books  .  .  .  take  her  to  see  good  plays." 

Guen  laughed,  as  though  she  did  not  take  this  queer  friend- 


INTRUSION  99 

ship  very  seriously— or  as  though  she  considered  this  part  of 
Allan's  education  had  already  been  sufficiently  delayed.  Per- 
haps she  was  vaguely  sorry  he  had  not  taken  her  into  his  con- 
fidence and  sorry,  too,  only  less  vaguely,  that  Allan's  first 
teacher  should  be  Roberta.  Yet  there  were  things,  she  supposed, 
that  even  a  Roberta  could  teach  him.  But  as  though  the  knowl- 
edge annoyed  her  she  switched  the  conversation  suddenly  into 
another  channel. 

"I've  two  pieces  of  news  for  you,"  she  said.  "The  first  is 
that  Tony's  offering  you  a  job  on  his  new  paper.  He  hopes  to 
get  it  started  in  September.  The  second  seems  to  me  rather 
more  important,  but  I'm  probably  prejudiced.  Don't  jump. 
It's  this.  Tony  and  I  are  to  be  married  on  Friday  morning." 


CHAPTER  TEN 


CONCESSIONS  to  Friday's  ceremony  in  the  Registry 
Office  at  Bloomsbury  were  few.  Guen's  appeared  to 
begin  and  end  with  a  new  costume;  Allan's  with  an 
extension  of  his  normal  luncheon  hour  and, the  substitution  of 
Rumpelmeyer's  for  Slater's.  But  John  Suffield  abandoned  work 
for  the  day  and  took  his  family  off  to  a  matinee  when  Allan 
had  gone  back  to  the  office  and  Antony  and  Guen  had  caught 
the  three  something  to  Havering  Hill  where  Antony  had  found 
the  house  Guen  had  re-named  "Green  Hedges"  and  in  favour 
of  which  she  had  at  last  consented  to  leave  the  suburbs.  They 
believed,  Guen  and  A.G.,  that  the  place  in  which  to  spend  your 
honeymoon  was  the  place  in  which  you  intended  to  live — if  it 
was  nice  enough.  And  Guen  and  Antony  seemed  to  think 
"Green  Hedges"  was. 

Anne  Sumeld — who  had  gone  to  the  altar  with  orange  blos- 
som, old  point  lace,  and  half  a  dozen  bridesmaids — took  the 
day  calmly.  All  the  same,  she  would  certainly  have  agreed 
with  Roberta  that  it  was  "the  queerest  wedding."  And  Roberta 
said  that  to  Allan  on  the  following  Monday  when  he  took  her 
to  the  Czecho-Slovak  concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall.  The  con- 
cert bored  her  extremely,  and  to  make  up  for  it  Allan  suggested 
that  on  the  coming  Saturday  afternoon  they  should  walk  out 
into  the  country.  But  the  weather  had  suddenly  become  very 
hot  and  Roberta  didn't  fancy,  she  said,  walking  "all  down 
those  country  roads." 

"We  won't  go  near  the  roads,"  Allan  said.  "We'll  keep  to 
the  field  paths." 

"You  don't,"  Roberta  told  him.  "You  always  leave  them 
and  walk  where  it  says  'Private,'  or  'Trespassers  will  be  prose- 
cuted.' You  have  got  a  nerve."  Roberta  never  could  see  that 
a  walk  was  improved  by  the  possibility  of  police-court  pro- 
ceedings to  follow;  and  she  thought  Allan  was  merely  being 

100 


INTRUSION  101 

"clever,"  as  he  probably  was,  when  he  said  that  he  was  the 
special  instrument,  under  Providence,  of  improving  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  gamekeepers  as  to  the  iniquitious  game  laws  of 
England  and  the  private  ownership  of  land. 

The  heat  on  Saturday  was  intense,  and  Allan  was  tired  and 
hot  when  he  met  Roberta  at  Charing  Cross.  But  neither  heat 
nor  cold  made  the  least  difference  to  Roberta's  appearance. 
She  took  the  summer  sun  as  she  took  the  northern  wind,  with 
beauty.  She  remained  always  a  marvel  and  delight  to  the  eye. 
The  heat  never  fagged  her  out  as  it  did  Allan;  but  she  was 
incorrigibly  lazy  and  did  not  care  for  walking  in  the  way  Allan 
cared  for  it — even  now  after  that  injury  to  his  leg.  But  on 
this  afternoon  she  was  especially  amiable  and  agreeable,  and 
Allan,  for  once,  did  not  want  to  talk.  They  took  train  con- 
siderably farther  down  the  line  than  usual,  and  made  them- 
selves comfortable  under  some  trees  in  a  friendly  wood,  and 
at  intervals  Allan  read  aloud  to  her.  She  was  amiable,  too, 
about  that:  more  amiable  certainly  than  Allan,  who  wished 
Roberta  was  less  definitely  the  sort  of  person  who  said,  "Yes, 
all  right,  you  know,"  if  you  asked  whether  or  not  she  liked 
what  you  read.  Sometimes  she  said,  "I  don't  know,  quite, 
what  it  all  means;  but  then  you  don't,  with  poetry,  do  you? 
You  either  do  or  you  don't,  reely."  She  had  no  criteria  at  all, 
and  could  not  in  the  least  understand  why  she  ought  to  prefer 
Browning  to  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox,  nor  why  it  was  so  delightful 
that  a  man  named  Herrick  should  have  thought  of  calling  a 
primrose  "the  sweet  infanta  of  the  year."  Allan  had  tried  to 
read  modern  verse  to  her,  but  the  violence  of  war  imagery 
disgusted  her  and  it  was  difficult,  somehow,  to  escape  it. 
Difficult  also  to  know  where  to  begin  in  this  matter  of  Roberta's 
education,  for  her  knowledge  of  literature  was  infinitesimal. 
She  couldn't,  she  said,  "see  the  use  of  poetry";  but  for  Brown- 
ing Allan  had  elicited  a  faint  meed  of  appreciation,  probably 
because  he  read  well  and  was  sensible  enough  to  choose  the 
dramatic  monologues.  Scott's  stories  in  verse  and  in  prose 
sent  her  to  sleep.  In  Shakespeare  she  cared  only  for  the  story 
and  then  found  fault  with  it.  With  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
she  had  the  merest  nodding  acquaintance.  Of  Shelley  she 
knew  nothing  save  some  horrible  version  of  his  life  story,  and 
Allan  discovered  with  a  pang  that  she  agreed  with  Lord  Cole- 
ridge's opinion  of  his  moral  character — or  would  have  done  so 


102  INTRUSION 

had  she  been  acquainted  with  it.  Of  Keats  she  knew  no  more 
than  that  he  had  been  a  chemist,  and  Allan  gathered  that  she 
thought  he  would  have  been  of  considerably  more  use  to  the 
world  as  a  chemist  than  as  a  poet. 

"Why  couldn't  he  find  something  cheerful  to  write  about?" 
Roberta  inquired  presently.  "Personally,  I  can't  see  why  any- 
body should  want  to  write  about  autumn.  It's  a  beastly  season 
of  the  year.  Enough  to  depress  a  saint." 

"I  have  a  sister  who  would  agree  with  you.  She  thinks  the 
poets  are  a  gloomy  lot." 

Roberta  smiled.  "Well,  they  are,"  she  said.  "Still,  you 
know,  I'm  not  lit'ry." 

She  stretched  her  arms  above  her  head  and  laughed  up  into 
the  face  of  the  day,  and  as  Allan  looked  at  her  something 
stirred  within  him,  like  some  faint  quiver  of  his  soul.  She 
had  the  beauty  of  the  early  summer — of  the  blue  sky  and  the 
white  clouds,  of  the  green  hills  and  soft  winds. 

Presently  Allan  went  on  with  his  reading,  and  when  he  had 
finished  she  said  nothing — only  rolled  over  and  propped  herself 
up  on  her  elbows,  laughing  softly. 

"I  tell  you,"  she  said,  "I'm  not  lit'ry." 

"It  doesn't  matter,"  Allan  said. 

Silently  Roberta  relaxed  her  elbows  and  laid  her  arms  along 
the  cool  grass,  her  fingers  plucking  at  it.  Allan  watched  her 
split  the  blades  neatly  down  the  centre  and  throw  them  away. 
He  did  not  speak.  He  had  forgotten  Keats.  He  was  thinking 
that  Roberta's  hands  were  the  least  pretty  part  of  her.  They 
were  short  and  plump  and  the  finger-tips  were  square.  Allan 
had  a  weakness  for  beautiful  hands.  Caryl  had  them — and 
Madeleine.  Madeleine  especially,  as  he  remembered  sud- 
denly— and  to  his  own  surprise.  They  were  long,  with  taper- 
ing fingers  and  finely  modelled  nails,  and  he  used  to  wonder 
how  a  girl  who  used  a  typewriter  managed  to  retain  them. 
Madeleine's  hands,  for  the  young  Suffields,  had  set  a  standard 
of  beauty,  and  Maurice  Linton  had  once  taken  a  plaster  cast 
of  them  and  hung  them  upon  a  nail  on  his  wall.  Heaven 
only  knew  what  had  become  of  them  now:  the  Lintons  were 
not  the  sort  of  folk  to  want  other  people's  hands  upon  their 
walls.  ...  A  gust  of  impatience  ran  through  the  corridor  of 
Allan's  mind,  chasing  out  the  vivid  memory  and  banging  the 
door  upon  it  What  nonsense  it  all  was!  Why  was  the  long, 


INTRUSION  103 

slim  hand  any  more  beautiful  than  the  short,  plump  one  that 
had  dimples  at  the  knuckles,  as  Roberta's  had?  The  very  sight 
of  it  somehow  stopped  the  current  of-  his  thoughts.  He  said 
again,  stupidly,  "It  doesn't  matter." 

"It  does — sometimes,"  Roberta  said.  "Sometimes  it  matters 
a  lot." 

"Does  it?" 

"You  know  it  does!" 

He  drew  himself  nearer  to  her.  Her  white,  thick  hands  in 
the  grass  were  still.  She  looked  at  him  archly,  without  turning 
her  head,  and  deep  down  within  him  that  something  that  had 
stirred  before  stirred  again — a  sensation  curiously  painful. 

"It  doesn't  matter  to-day,  anyway,"  he  said.  "Perhaps  it 
never  really  did." 

"But  you'd  like  me  better,  wouldn't  you,  if  I  were  lit'ry?" 

"I  couldn't  like  you— better." 

Her  oblique  smile  flashed  again.  He  went  nearer  and  with 
a  single  movement  pulled  her  up  sharply  to  him.  Suddenly 
she  lifted  her  arms  and  put  them  round  his  neck.  His  grip 
tightened,  then,  scarcely  realising  what  he  did,  he  lifted  her 
chin  with  his  own  and  fastened  his  mouth  on  hers. 

Afterwards,  watching  her  as  she  lay  back  on  the  grass,  the 
thought  came  to  him  that  this  was  the  first  time  he  had  ever 
kissed  a  girl,  and  he  was  twenty-seven.  It  seemed  ridiculous. 
But  mixed  up  with  his  sense  of  absurdity  was  a  sense  of  satis- 
faction because,  though  Roberta  had  struggled  at  the  last 
second  to  be  free,  she  had,  in  the  first,  submitted.  She  had 
wanted  to  be  kissed,  or,  at  least,  had  wanted  him  to  kiss  her. 
Even  there,  in  those  moments  of  intoxicating  aftermath,  the 
subtle  distinction  between  the  two  states  of  mind  was  not 
entirely  lost  upon  him.  Even  now  the  Puritan  that  lurked 
somewhere  within  Allan  raised  its  head  and  frowned  at  him 
over  the  hot  wall  of  his  high  ecstasy. 

"Shall  we  go  and  look  for  tea?"  he  said  presently. 

"All  right,"  said  Roberta,  staring  at  her  face  in  a  few  inches 
of  pocket  looking-glass.  She  sounded  extraordinarily  matter- 
of-fact  and  self-possessed;  and  Allan,  cramming  his  Keats 
down  into  his  pocket,  wondered  for  an  instant  why  he  should 
resent  it,  why  he  should  have  this  feeling  that  he  had  been 
tricked  and  trapped. 


104  INTRUSION 

2 

Tea,  that  afternoon,  had  about  it  a  note  of  intimacy  which 
had  belonged  to  no  other  that  had  preceded  it.  It  had,  too, 
on  Roberta's  part,  a  subtly  proprietorial  air  which  Allan  found 
both  amusing  and  disturbing.  But  what  was  infinitely  more 
disturbing  was  the  way  in  which,  at  intervals  throughout  the 
meal,  Allan  found  himself  thinking  of  nothing  but  Roberta's 
eyes  and  mouth.  .  .  .  Even  her  air  of  wanting  to  please  him 
was  a  little  disconcerting,  because  Allan  was  so  unused  to  it. 
iWith  him  Roberta  had  usually  rather  overdone  that  amiable 
trick  she  had  of  condescending  to  the  male  creature  who  took 
her  about  and  stood  her  meals.  Here  to-day,  for  the  first  time, 
she  seemed  to  Allan  to  be  taking  pains  over  him,  as  though, 
belatedly,  she  had  at  last  decided  that  he  was  worth  while. 
She  had  taken  the  trouble,  Allan  thought — a  little  savagely 
even  amid  this  new  ecstatic  happiness — to  bring  the  whole  of 
herself  out  with  him.  He  couldn't  remember  that  she  had 
ever  done  it  before.  Here,  this  afternoon,  there  was  suddenly 
very  much  more  of  her  than  he  had  imagined,  and  the  knowl- 
edge pleased  him,  so  that  throughout  the  meal  a  sense  of 
satisfaction  burned  steadily  through  to  him.  He  was  happier 
than  he  ever  remembered  to  have  been  before — or  more  con- 
scious, perhaps,  of  his  happiness,  and  when  Roberta  told  him 
presently  that  he  was  eating  nothing  at  all  he  laughed.  Because 
tea  was  not  a  meal,  an  occasion  when  you  ate  and  drank,  but 
a  queer  throbbing  delight,  an  interlude  of  passionate  joy — a 
wild  sensing  of  days  just  as  wonderful  to  come. 

He  saw  that  Roberta,  too,  looked  happy.  He  did  not  see, 
what  was  equally  obvious,  that  she  also  looked  triumphant. 


They  set  out  to-  walk  to  the  station,  and  it  was  Roberta's 
fault  that  they  found  themselves  instead  inside  the  local  cin- 
ema. Allan,  who  was  not  addicted  to  the  "pictures,"  had 
demurred  that  it  would  make  them  too  late  in  getting  home. 
He  had  no  desire  to  cross  propriety  swords  with  Mrs.  Leigh 
and  was  very  uncertain  about  the  time  of  the  last  train.  But 
Roberta  knew.  She  was  very  positive — had  heard  the  porter 
telling  someone  that  afternoon  at  the  station.  And  Roberta 


INTRUSION  105 

carried  her  point  because  Allan  had  a  sudden  enticing  vision  of 
close  seats,  lowered  lights,  Roberta's  misty  hair  and  bright  eyes. 
The  vulgar  truth  swept  over  him.  He  wanted  to  sit  there  in 
the  dark  with  Roberta,  holding  her  hand,  perhaps.  .  .  .  He 
forgot  Mrs.  Leigh  brandishing  the  drawn  sword  of  propriety. 

As  he  sat  there  at  the  back  with  Roberta  he  was  conscious 
every  'now  and  then  of  a  sense  of  irritation  that  the  cinema 
should  be  so  banal  and  so  vulgar  when  there  were  so  many 
other  things  it  might  have  been.  But  he  did  not  think  of  the 
cinema  overmuch.  His  sensations — in  so  far  as  he  realised 
them  at  all — were  of  being  separate  and  remote ;  of  being  caught 
up  from  himself  and  from  life  and  held  suspended  midway 
between  that  world  of  reality  and  some  other  that  was  dazzling 
and  bewitching  and  beckoning.  At  times  he  struggled  to  climb 
up  or  to  climb  down;  but  for  the  most  part  he  let  himself 
dangle,  content  to  feel  Roberta's  cool  hand  in  his,  to  note  the 
beauty  of  the  white  line  of  her  profile  in  the  half  dark,  the 
flash  of  even  teeth  and  her  little  tantalising,  downward 
smile.  .  .  . 

When  at  last  he  thought  of  the  time,  sudden  panic  seized 
him.  It  had  already  turned  the  half-hour  past  ten.  The 
station  was  some  distance  off,  and  he  was  not  too  sure  of  its 
direction.  He  seized  his  hat  and  rushed  Roberta  out  into  the 
street.  Afterwards  it  seemed  to  him  that  they  must  have  run 
all  the  way  to  the  station:  he  remembered  that  he  had  held 
Roberta's  hand  in  his,  that  he  had  pulled  her  roughly  along 
when  she  showed  signs  of  flagging,  and  that  as  they  entered 
the  station  a  porter  on  the  other  platform  shouted  across  to 
them  that  there  was  plenty  of  time.  Allan's  heart  gave  a 
bound  of  relief.  He  released  Roberta's  hand  and  snatched  at 
his  personal  dignity. 

"Last  train  down  from  this  side,  sir!"  the  porter  cried. 
"Eleven  five." 

"But  it's  the  London  train  we  want,"  Allan  objected.  His 
voice  was  slightly  querulous;  it  indicated  a  pained  surprise 
that  anyone  should  imagine  he  could  possibly  want  to  be  going 
down  the  line  at  that  time  of  night.  The  porter  remained  calm. 

"Last  London  train  leaves  at  ten-forty,  sir!"  he  replied. 

"Ten-forty?     Then  we'  ve  missed  it!" 

The  porter  accepted  that. 

"That's  it,  sir,"  he  said. 


io6  INTRUSION 

"We've  done  it!"  Allan  said  briefly  to  Roberta.  Mechani- 
cally his  mind  registered  the  fact  that  she  stood  there  looking 
pale  and  a  little  frightened.  Long  afterwards  he  remembered 
that  expression  on  her  face.  Fright  and  something  else  not  so 
easily  denned:  but  certainly  not  surprise.  Months  later  he 
would  have  sworn  to  that  in  a  court  of  law. 

"There  must  be  some  way  of  getting  home,"  Roberta  said. 
"It's  so  absurd." 

"How  in  the  world,"  Allan  asked  her,  "did  you  come  to  make 
such  a  mistake?" 

"I  don't  know.  ...  I  made  sure  that  was  what  he  said. 
Last  train  eleven-five,  Marylebone.  It's  no  good  glaring  at  me: 
you  don't  suppose  I  wanted  to  miss  the  train,  do  you?  " 

"I'm  not  glaring  at  you,"  Allan  said.  "It's  my  fault.  I 
oughtn't  to  have  chanced  it.  I'm  afraid  we've  got  to  stay  here 
for  the  night." 

"But  there  must  be  some  way  of  getting  home,"  Roberta 
said  again.  "I'm  tired.  .  .  .  I'll  sit  down  while  you  go  and 
find  out." 

Allan  went.  He  was  away  some  fifteen  minutes  or  so,  and 
when  he  returned  Roberta  had  taken  off  her  hat  and  was  lean- 
ing back  against  the  wall  of  the  station  with  her  eyes  closed. 
The  bright  moonlight  had  robbed  her  of  colour,  leaving  her 
a  red-gold  mist  for  hair  and  a  face  and  neck  of  alabaster.  Allan 
wanted  to  kick  himself.  He  had  set  out  to  help  and  look  after 
her — and  this  was  how  he  began !  He  was  a  fool !  As  though 
the  conviction  humbled  him,  he  stooped  and  kissed  the  top  of 
her  head. 

"It's  all  right,"  he  said,  at  which  Roberta  opened  her  eyes 
and  sat  up. 

"There  is  a  train,  after  all?" 

"No — not  until  the  seven-twelve  to-morrow  morning.  I  tried 
to  get  a  conveyance.  No  luck.  But  the  porter  says  his  wife 
will  put  you  up.  Come  along,  I'll  take  you  down." 

"What  about  you?" 

"I?  Oh,  I'm  going  for  a  walk!  .  .  .  Afterwards  I  can 
shake  down  here.  I'll  be  all  right.  I  don't  matter.  It's  you. 
Do  you  think  you'll  get  into  a  row?" 

Roberta  jammed  on  her  hat. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  ...  I  dare  say.  It's  quite  the  sort  of 
thing  mother's  likely  to  make  a  fuss  about." 


INTRUSION  107 

"Well — you  can  hardly  blame  her." 

"Oh,  mother's  impossible!  She  doesn't  trust  people — you'll 
have  to  stick  up  for  me." 

He  would  do  that,  he  said.  But  he  hoped  Mrs.  Leigh  was 
going  to  be  reasonable.  His  eyes  rested,  thoughtfully,  upon 
the  daisies  that  grew  on  the  railway  bank,  looking  like  big  stars 
beneath  the  white  moon.  And  again  he  hoped  Roberta's 
mother  would  be  reasonable.  It  wasn't  the  sort  of  situation 
he'd  care  to  argue  about. 

Outside  the  porter's  house  he  shook  hands  with  Roberta,  but 
did  not  offer  to  kiss  her.  He  was  too  uneasy  for  that.  He 
realised,  vaguely,  that  Roberta  was  uneasy  too,  and  at  the  back 
of  his  mind  lurked  the  knowledge  that  when  you  took  a  girl 
out  into  the  country  you  did  not  miss  the  last  train  home.  You 
were  most  careful  about  that.  It  really  did  matter. 

The  mood  of  the  afternoon  had  gone:  so  had  that— other 
and  different— of  the  cinema.  All  that  was  unreal.  The  only 
thing  that  was  real,  that  existed,  was  this  ridiculous  fact  that 
he  had  allowed  Roberta  to  lose  the  last  train. 

It  depressed  him.  It  depressed  him  so  much  that  the  idea 
of  a  walk  and  the  rest  of  the  night  on  the  station  no  longer 
appealed  to  him.  He  went  into  the  first  inn  he  came  to — he 
never  even  knew  its  name — and  asked  for  a  bed.  "I  shan't 
need  breakfast,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  catch  the  first  train  to 
town."  He  had  said  something  like  that  to  Roberta.  "Tell 
them  you  don't  want  breakfast — that  you  must  get  home  by 
the  first  train." 

The  people  at  the  hotel  were  accommodating.  They  were 
also  sympathetic,  and  while  Allan  wrote  his  name  in  the 
Visitors'  Book  they  agreed  that  the  train  service  was  painfully 
inadequate  and  were  quite  sure  the  young  lady  would  be  very 
comfortable  with  the  porter's  wife.  Later  they  gave  him  his 
bill,  promised  he  should  be  called  in  good  time  and  showed 
him  to  his  room.  Allan  sat  down  in  it  and,  feeling  not  in  the 
least  like  bed,  began  to  re-read  the  Ode  to  Autumn  that  Roberta 
that  afternoon — and  Caryl  before  her — had  labelled  "depres- 
sing." It  seemed  to  him  now  that  they  were  right.  The  strain 
of  melancholy  was  there.  For  Keats,  autumn  crowned,  even 
while  it  killed,  the  hope  that  summer  had  given.  It  was  a 
world  of  slain  hopes,  of  unfulfilled  promises.  Allan  shut  up 
the  book,  turned  out  the  light  and  got  into  bed. 


io8  INTRUSION 

But  not  to  sleep. 

The  green  and  gold  of  the  afternoon  danced  before  his  eyes, 
and  the  figure  of  Roberta,  flat  in  the  grass,  pulling  at  the  grass 
with  fingers  that  were  thick  and  short  and  not  beautiful,  some- 
how, like  the  rest  of  her. 

His  thoughts  would  not  leave  him.  He  wondered  if  she  were 
asleep  or  if  she,  too,  lay  awake,  restless  and  concerned  for  the 
morrow,  as  he  was.  He  got  out  of  bed  and  drew  up  the  blind. 
Outside  the  summer  night  passed  on.  The  warm  air  moved 
about  him,  and  the  perfume  of  syringa  and  jasmine.  Between 
the  dark  trees  of  the  garden  a  silver  moon  hung,  like  a  lantern. 
The  cool  woods  on  the  hill-side  where  they  had  lain  that 
afternoon  were  folded  duskily  in  amethystine.  Save  for  the 
soft  voice  of  the  wind  in  the  trees  the  silence  was  unbroken. 
It  seemed,  somehow,  to  hem  in  the  world.  .  .  . 

It  was  a  long  while  before  Allan  got  back  into  bed,  and  when, 
much  later,  he  fell  asleep,  it  was  to  dream  of  racing  with 
Roberta  through  the  streets  of  town  after  town,  his  fingers 
twisted  in  hers.  Once  or  twice  she  fell,  huddled,  at  his  feet. 
He  pulled  her  up  again  and  they  sped  on.  The  moon  faded 
and  the  sun  came  up,  and  the  turquoise  morning  sky,  but  they 
never  paused.  They  were  running,  he  and  she,  to  the  end  of 
the  world.  And  then,  miraculously,  she  slipped  her  hand, 
darted  forward  and  out-distanced  him.  He  ran  on  and  on, 
but  for  all  his  effort  he  never  gained  one  inch  upon  her.  He 
saw  her  run,  staggering,  up  a  green  hill  above  which  the  sun 
was  heaving  his  broad  shoulder.  For  one  second  she  paused, 
threw  up  her  arms  in  the  face  of  the  sun  and  disappeared. 
Nothing,  when  he  reached  the  top,  but  the  green  hill  and  the 
red-gold  sun  and  the  moon-daisies  white  beneath  it. 

He  awoke  shivering,  to  find  it  morning  and  someone  knocking 
at  the  door. 

He  hurried  to  the  station  with  a  sense  heavy  upon  him  that 
he  had  been  hurrying  like  this  all  night.  So  vivid  as  all  that 
had  his  dream  been;  it  had  left  him  tired  and  unrefreshed. 

Roberta  was  on  the  platform,  waiting.  She  looked  pale  and 
had  not  slept  well,  either,  she  said.  And  she  had  had  no  break- 
fast. No  one  had  been  up  at  the  house.  She  had  let  herself 
out. 

They  were  very  quiet  on  the  way  to  Marylebone.  Roberta 
spoke  little:  she  smiled  when  he  spoke  to  her  and  let  her  hand 


INTRUSION 

rest  within  his.  The  bells  for  early  service  were  ringing  when 
they  got  into  town.  Here  and  there  from  tall  dark  houses 
communicants  stole  out  and  hurried  away — each  with  a  hungry 
look,  as  Allan  thought.  He  was  hungry,  too — and  Roberta. 
As  they  neared  Manningtree  Avenue  she  pulled  sharply  at  his 
arm. 

"Go  slower  ...  it  looks  so  silly  to  hurry  like  this." 

"Are  we  hurrying?     I  didn't  know." 

"You  stride  so  ...  you've  given  me  a  stitch.  There's  no 
need  to  hurry." 

"None.  .  .  .  None  at  all.     I  say,  do  you  feel  faint?" 

"A  little— and  oh,  Allan,  I  believe  I'm  afraid!  .  .  ." 

"Why?  There's  nothing  to  be  afraid  of.  We  haven't  done 
anything  to  be  ashamed  of." 

"I  know.  .  .  .  But  I  am  frightened.  .  .  ." 

He  stopped  suddenly  on  the  pavement  and  took  her  by  the 
arm.  For  the  moment — resolutely,  and  for  Roberta's  sake — 
he  put  from  him  the  uneasiness  of  the  night,  refusing  to  see 
in  the  sagging,  bulky  figure  of  Mrs.  Leigh  any  dire  personifica- 
tion of  Mrs.  Grundy. 

"Look  here,  Bobbie,"  he  said,  "you're  to  stop  being  fright- 
ened. There's  nothing  whatever  to  feel  like  that  about.  We 
were  rather  silly  and  careless — nothing  else.  No  one's  going 
to  suggest  anything  else.  It  was  the  sort  of  mistake  anybody 
could  make.  An  accident.  Now,  wasn't  it?" 

Roberta  didn't  look  at  him. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "of  course." 

"Come  along,  then,"  said  Allan,  "and  don't  be  silly!" 

They  went  on  again,  past  windows  in  which  people  sat, 
furtively  pulling  at  the  curtains,  in  the  way  Suburbia  has,  to 
glance  at  them.  As  they  went  in  at  the  gate  of  two-hundred- 
and-two  the  man  from  upstairs  opened  the  door  and  came  out 
with  his  dog.  He  said  good  morning  to  Roberta  and  raised  his 
hat:  but  Allan,  turning  his  head,  saw  him  look  at  his  watch. 

"Damn!"  he  said  to  himself.  Not  alone  because  of  the 
man  with  the  dog  and  his  watch,  but  because  behind  the  Not- 
tingham lace  curtains  of  the  ground  floor  window  he  saw  the 
waiting  figures  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Leigh.  They,  too,  must  have 
seen  the  encounter  with  the  man  from  upstairs.  Of  course, 
they  had  seen.  They  had  seen  everything.  They  had  been 
there  at  the  window  all  night.  That  was  the  impression  Allan 


no  INTRUSION 

received — that  they  had  been  standing  there  behind  the  curtains 
all  night,  watching. 


It  was  Mrs.  Leigh  who  opened  the  door.  An  odour  of  bacon 
rushed  out  at  them;  then  the  door  closed  again,  shutting  them 
inside  with  the  smell.  Out  there  in  the  narrow  passage  nobody 
spoke.  Allan  and  Roberta  wiped  their  mudless  boots  very 
carefully  upon  the  mat  and  followed  Airs.  Leigh  into  the  front 
sitting-room,  where  Mr.  Leigh  stood  uneasily  upon  the  hearth- 
rug and  fidgeted  with  the  tails  of  his  coat.  There  was  a  hor- 
rible air  of  suppressed  emotion  about  Roberta's  mother.  Her 
face  was  white  and  strained.  She  said  nothing,  only  moved 
about  the  room  picking  things  up  and  putting  them  down 
again.  A  sort  of  mental  paralysis  seemed  to  have  overtaken 
Allan.  His  brain  felt  numb :  he  could  think  of  nothing  to  say. 
Something  of  the  same  process  seemed  to  have  taken  place  with 
Roberta's  father,  but  he  recovered  more  quickly  than  Allan. 

"Mr.  Suffield  ...  I  must  really  ask  for  an  explanation.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Leigh,  as  at  a  given  signal,  dropped  the  china  dog  she 
was  moving  for  the  third  time  and  went  over  and  shut  up  the 
window.  That,  somehow,  woke  Allan  up. 

"The  explanation,  sir,  is  quite  simple.  We  missed  the  last 
train  and  had  to  stay  the  night." 

The  nervous  energy  ebbed  out  of  Mrs.  Leigh's  fingers  and 
feet.  They  were  suddenly  still.  But  her  lips  moved  and  her 
tongue. 

"Missed  the  train!"  she  said.  "Why  don't  you  tell  us  Queen 
Anne's  dead,  Mr.  Suffield?" 

Allan  felt  suddenly  idiotic.    He  wanted  to  laugh. 

"I  imagined  you  knew,"  he  said.  "She's  quite  famous  for 
being  dead." 

"Young  man,"  said  Mr.  Leigh  sternly,  "people  'don't  miss 
last  trains  when  they  take  young  women  out  into  the  country." 

"I  know  it  isn't  done,"  said  Allan,  "but,  you  see,  we  did  it." 

"This  is  no  occasion  for  levity,  Mr.  Suffield.  You  ought  to 
be  able  to  see  that  for  yourself." 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Allan.  "I  do  see  that,  of  course;' 
but  I'm  afraid,  you  know,  that  I  don't  quite  see  that  it  is  an 
occasion  for  sackcloth  and  ashes."  Sanity  returned  to  him: 


INTRUSION  in 

the  ghost  of  Queen  Anne  no  longer  gibbered  at  him  from  the 
dead  centuries.  He  only  saw  Roberta  standing  there  on  the 
edge  of  tears:  her  face  white  and  frightened  and  puckered  up 
in  a  fashion  horribly  pathetic.  He  began  to  explain.  .  .  . 
"We  caught  the  very  first  train  back  this  morning  .  .  ."  he 
finished.  "We  didn't  even  wait  for  a  meal." 

He  saw  suddenly  that  it  would  have  been  better  if  they  had. 
He  saw  it  before  Roberta's  mother  came  and  sat  in  her  tem- 
pestuous fashion  on  a  chair  in  the  middle  of  the  room  and  said 
she  wished  to  God  they  had. 

"Coming  in  'ere  at  half-past  eight  in  the  morning.  .  .  . 
What  do  you  think  people  think? — specially  that  woman 
upstairs,  who  knows  Roberta  didn't  come  home  last  night  as 
well  as  I  know  it  myself.  It'd  have  looked  more  natural-like 
if  you'd  come  in  about  one — as  if  you  were  coming  to  lunch. 
Now  it'll  be  all  over  the  road  by  to-morrow  morning." 

"I  can't  see  what  it  has  to  do  with  the  neighbours,"  Allan 
said.  He  was  amazed  at  her  passion:  it  seemed  wasted,  some- 
how, to  him,  on  mere  neighbours.  He  couldn't,  for  the  life 
of  him,  see  where  the  neighbours  came  in,  even  allowing  for 
that  man  and  his  watch.  .  .  . 

"Who  else  has  it  got  to  do  with,  then?  It's  the  neighbours 
that  matter,"  enunciated  Mrs.  Leigh. 

"I  really  can't  see  it,"  Allan  said.  "I  can't  see  that  any- 
body's concerned  but  you  and  Mr.  Leigh.  I  have  given  you 
the  truth !  If  you  accept  it,  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said — : 
save  that  I'm  very  sorry  indeed  I  ever  allowed  it  to  happen." 

Mrs.  Leigh  took  out  her  handkerchief  and  began  to  weep 
into  it.  Mr.  Leigh  turned  and  gazed  into  the  empty  grate, 
then  away  from  it  to  the  shut  window  as  if,  even  now,  the 
eagle  eye  of  one  of  the  neighbours  might  be  glued  to  it. 

"You  don't  understand,"  Mrs.  Leigh  sobbed.  "It  isn't  that 
I  don't  believe  what  you  say,  nor  yet  her  father,  neither.  I'm 
sure  we  trust  you,  Mr.  Suffield.  I've  always  said  you  were  a 
gentleman.  It  isn't  that.  But  I've  been  through  this  sort  of 
thing  before.  After  what  has  happened  she  really  couldn't 
afford  to  do  it,  Mr.  Suffield.  I  always  said  we  ought  to  have 
moved  out  of  the  neighbourhood — though  where  we  should  have 
gone,  goodness  knows." 

"Now,  mother,  leave  it  alone,"  advised  her  husband.  "No 
use  crying  over  spilt  milk." 


112  INTRUSION 

"But  you  needn't  keep  on  spilling  it,"  Mrs.  Leigh  said. 

Once  again  Allan  was  caught  by  that  tremendous  desire  for 
laughter,  and  once  again  mysteriously  kept  from  laughter  by 
something  he  read  in  Roberta's  face. 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  understand,"  he  said. 

Something  at  that  seemed  to  happen  to  Roberta.  The  colour 
came  to  her  face  and  she  took  a  step  forward.  "Oh,  do  shut 
up,  mother!"  she  said. 

But  Mrs.  Leigh  showed  no  inclination  to  do  anything  of  the 
sort. 

"Now,  my  girl,"  she  said,  "you  listen  to  me.  You  can  pack 
your  things  and  take  yourself  off.  You  can't  say  I  haven't 
warned  you.  Once  in  a  lifetime's  sufficient.  I  won't  have  you 
at  home  no  more.  So  you  know.  ..." 

Roberta's  tears  fell  in  a  sudden  shower  over  her  face.  She 
made  no  attempt  to  wipe  them  away:  they  ran  salt  into  her 
mouth  as  she  opened  it  to  speak. 

"I  haven't  done  anything,  mother.  I  haven't  done  anything 
at  all." 

"You've  done  enough,  my  girl.  You've  done  too  much  by 
half.  And  now  you  go!" 

Her  phrases  fell  like  a  lash  upon  Allan's  understanding.  The 
fog  of  her  innuendo  smothered  him. 

"I  can't  imagine  what  you  mean,"  he  said.  "You  can't 
possibly  be  meaning  to  turn  Roberta  out  of  the  house  because 
of  this  occurrence,  especially  as  you  say  you  accept  my  version 
of  the  facts.  There's  something  behind  it  all.  If  it  concerns 
me  ...  or  my  brother,  perhaps  ...  I  think  I  ought  to  hear  it." 

Mrs.  Leigh  blew  her  nose  and  said  that  it  didn't  concern  him 
or  his  brother,  but  that  she  thought  he  ought  to  be  told. 

"Don't  be  a  fool,  Martha!"  her  husband  cautioned  her  from 
the  window,  and  Roberta — a  new,  distracted,  agitated  Roberta — 
cried  out  in  protest. 

"Oh,  mother,  please.  .  .  .  Not  that  old  story,  please  .  .  . 
please.  It  isn't  fair!" 

What  happened  after  that  was  never  very  clear  to  Allan,  save 
what  came  at  the  end.  For  the  rest  of  his  life  he  carried  with 
him  a  vague  recollection  of  a  number  of  things  happening  at 
once  and  of  something  queer  and  unexpected  happening  sud- 
denly to  himself  there  at  the  end.  With  the  passing  of  time 
they  made,  all  of  them,  in  his  mind  a  faint  grey  mist,  out  of 


INTRUSION  113 

which  Roberta^s  wet  face  rose  always  and  stabbed  at  him.  .  .  . 

But  they  were  clear  and  actual  that  Sunday  morning,  for  all 
he  comprehended  them  so  little.  Roberta  and  her  mother  in 
tears,  their  raised  voices  and  that  of  Mr.  Leigh  hushing  them 
down,  his  eyes  wandering  all  the  time  to  the  window ;  the  steady 
rise  and  fall  of  Mrs.  Leigh's  voice  and  the  gradual  implacable 
emerging  of  the  story  she  had  to  tell — the  story  of  Delia  King, 
known  of  all  the  neighbours  and  that  woman  upstairs.  .  .  . 

It  stood  there  stark  and  sheer  when  Mrs.  Leigh  had  done 
with  it.  Poor  little  Delia  King!  Between  them  they  left  her 
nothing — not  even  her  breathless  oblivion  nor  the  dark  secrecy 
that  was  the  grave!  The  sight  of  her  standing  there  naked 
and  shamed  in  her  compassionate  youth  hurt  Allan  to  the  soul. 
His  garment  of  speech  closed  round  her  tenderly. 

"I  shall  be  honoured,  Mrs.  Leigh,"  he  said,  "if  Roberta  will 
be  my  wife." 

He  hadn't  meant  to  say  it.  The  words  surprised  nobody  more 
than  they  surprised  him,  but  he  did  not  wish  them  unsaid. 
Under  cover  of  them  poor  little  Delia  King  stole  back  to  her 
grave,  and  Allan  was  worried  by  the  sight  of  her  no  longer. 
Suppliant,  he  held  out  his  hands  to  Roberta. 

"Bobbie,"  he  said,  "will  you  marry  me?" 


Half  an  hour  later  they  were  eating  fried  bacon  and  buttered 
toast  and  Mrs.  Leigh  was  saying  that  all  was  well  that  ended 
well.  She  seemed  very  certain  of  that. 

For  the  edification  of  the  neighbours  they  went,  presently, 
for  a  walk  before  dinner,  which  was  to  be  ready  at  two  o'clock. 
And  to  edify  the  neighbours  still  further  Mr.  Leigh  went  with 
them,  and  his  wife  came  to  the  gate  to  see  them  off.  In  the 
afternoon  Allan  and'Roberta  sat  in  the  front  room  and  Roberta 
played  tunes  on  the  cracked  piano.  She  played  the  wrong 
things  and  she  played  them  badly.  ...  It  was  a  long  time 
before  Allan  had  her  to  himself.  .  .  . 

That  afternoon  she  was,  perhaps,  as  near  to  loving  him  as 
she  ever  came,  and  though  she  was  exultant  and  triumphant 
she  was  grateful,  too.  For  Allan  was  going  to  take  her  away 
from  this  poky  little  house  and  from  her  mother's  suspicions 
and  muck-rakings  in  the  past.  She  hated  her  mother,  but  she 


114  INTRUSION 

was  fond  of  Allan — fonder  than  she  had  ever  been  of  anyone 
before,  unless  it  was  Jan — and  him  she  had  already  forgotten. 
Besides,  Jan  had  never  asked  her  to  marry  him. 

But  Allan  had — as  she  had  meant  he  should,  since  that  day 
when  she  had  first  seen  him  as  her  means  of  escape.  Not  that 
it  had  been  too  easy — there  had  been  a  risk  in  that  idea  of  the 
train.  .  .  . 

For  Allan  there  was  no  escape.  He  was  caught  in  the  web 
of  her  scheming  and  of  her  beauty — a  web  hung  with  bryony 
and  jasmine  and  heavy  with  scent.  The  wings  of  his  soul 
fluttered  once,  as  if  to  find  hers,  and  were  still.  The  web  was 
Strong  and  held.  He  could  not  escape. 

But  he  was  very  happy. 


CHAPTER    ELEVEN 


ALLAN'S  courtship  was  very  much  like  all  other  court- 
ships, save  that  he  had  no  standards  whereby  to  judge 
it.  Against  the  days  that  were  quite  certainly  happy 
there  were  others  that  just  as  certainly  were  not.  Against  the 
times  when  Allan  lived,  with  uplifted  air,  as  one  about  to 
make  a  tremendous  discovery,  there  were  others  when  the  world 
shrivelled  to  the  dimensions  of  the  Comet  office  or  the  span 
of  Roberta's  pretty  arms.  And  certainly  at  this  period  he 
never  discovered  anything  worth  discovering,  save  that  an 
engagement  can  be  a  disappointing  affair,  and  that  there  were 
days  when  the  very  thought  of  Roberta  tortured  him:  when  he 
almost  hated  her — not  because  she  had  so  much  of  him,  but 
because  she  hadn't  all  of  him,  because  there  were  reserves  out 
of  reach,  that  she  did  not  even  suspect.  Yet,  on  the  whole, 
these  days,  she  was  affable,  good-humoured  and  patient. 
Patient  she  needed  to  be,  for  Allan  was  at  times  distinctly 
trying.  He  could  no  more  accept  Roberta  as  he  found  her 
than  he  could  accept  the  world.  Behind  the  mask-like 
beauty  of  the  Roberta  to  whom  he  was  engaged  he  saw  always 
the  image  of  some  other  Roberta  he  imagined  she  could  become 
and  to  whom  he  would  like  much  better  to  be  engaged.  And 
Roberta,  who  was  enjoying  the  role  of  engaged  girl  and  would 
have  been  extremely  bored  by  this  vision  of  her  metamorphic 
self,  sacrificed  at  this  time  quite  a  number  of  her  own  inclina- 
tions to  keep  her  reformer-lover  in  good  humour.  She  did  not 
like  him  to  criticise  her  or  to  find  fault — not  because  she  had 
reached  that  stage  when  the  arrows  of  disapproval  could  pierce 
between  the  armour  of  her  amour-propre,  but  because  she 
believed  that  it  was  necessary  to  stem  the  tide  of  Allan's  critical 
tendencies  until  marriage  had  built  up  the  sea-wall  that  would 
defy  it.  That  was  why  she  tried  to  say  "nice"  and  "good  night" 
instead  of  "naice"  and  "good  naight"  which  came  so  much 

"5 


n6  INTRUSION 

more  easily,  but  which  had  an  extraordinarily  irritating  effect 
upon  Allan.  For  the  same  reason,  though  she  made  up  for  it 
by  reading  her  novelettes  in  bed  at  night,  she  suffered  Allan 
to  direct  her  literary  education,  and  formed  part  of  the  intel- 
ligentsia in  the  pit  to  see  "high  brow"  plays,  stifling  her 
yearning  for  "fluff"  and  the  revue. 

But  God,  tempering  the  wind,  had  sent  the  Russian  Ballet 
and  here  Allan  and  Roberta  met  on  something  like  common 
ground.  For  they  both  loved  the  Russian  Ballet.  That  they 
loved  it  for  different  reasons  didn't  matter,  though  they  cer- 
tainly did.  Roberta  went  to  the  Russian  Ballet  for  much  the 
same  reason  as  respectable  paterfamilias  from  the  suburbs  went 
to  see  Kismet  and  Chu  Chin  Chow,  and  Allan's  talk  of  design, 
of  co-ordination  and  setting  mystified  her,  as  did  his  flat  refusal 
to  read  the  "story"  beforehand.  M.  Diaghileff's  productions, 
however,  were  undoubtedly  a  godsend,  and  Allan  and  Roberta 
went  night  after  night  to  the  Alhambra  and  saw  Karsavina, 
Lopokova,  Lydia  Kyasht,  Massine  and  the  rest,  and  heard 
the  music  of  Rimsky-Korsakoff  and  Maurice  Ravel  and  Stra- 
vinsky and  Moussorgsky  and  (incidentally)  how  many  times 
their  neighbours  had  heard  it  before. 

Even  the  Russian  Ballet,  however,  did  not  entirely  wipe  out 
Allan's  moods  of  wretchedness  which  at  times  touched  pro- 
fundity. It  wasn't  always  Roberta's  affected  pronunciation 
nor  her  constitutional  inability  to  spell;  but  the  fact  that  she 
attracted  so  much  notice.  There  were  times  when  he  could 
have  murdered  the  men  who  sat  opposite  her  in  a  bus.  He 
hated  people  to  stare  at  her,  though  he  knew  that  if  he'd  been 
in  their  place  he  would  have  stared  just  the  same.  He  always 
felt  somehow  that  Roberta  enjoyed  the  attention  she  evoked. 
Frequently  she  didn't  attend  in  public  to  what  he  said:  her 
replies  were  absent  and  she  smiled  too  much.  "What's  funny?'* 
Allan  would  say,  and  at  her  "Nothing,"  rage  would  consume 
him.  "Then  what  are  you  smiling  for?"  he  would  say,  and 
Roberta  would  blush  and  look  angry  (which  only  made  her 
nicer  to  look  at),  and  the  man  opposite  would  glare  as  though 
he  considered  him  a  bully  who  didn't  deserve  his  luck.  Worst 
of  all,  however,  were  the  days  when  their  outings  together  were 
spoiled  because  of  the  things  that  came  between — the  things 
he  knew,  the  many  more  he  imagined:  the  kisses  other  men 
had  given  her,  the  kisses  Jan  had  given  her. 


INTRUSION 

Sometimes,  perversely,  he  talked  to  her  of  Jan,  and  she 
showed  no  disinclination  until  she  saw  it  made  him  angry. 
After  that  nothing  would  induce  her  to  respond,  and  sometimes 
that,  too,  made  him  angry:  a  black  devil  of  jealousy  sat  in  his 
heart  and  spoilt  their  hours  together,  until  Roberta  discovered 
that  the  charm  which  worked  was  her  tears.  He  never  could 
stand  seeing  her  cry.  But  at  such  times  Allan  could  not  have 
said  whether  he  hated  her  because  she  had  known  Jan  or 
because  she  had  already  forgotten  him. 

That,  however,  was  an  incident  of  which  Allan's  family  knew 
nothing.  And  Allan's  family  had  accepted  Roberta,  though 
the  thought  that  they  might  not  had  earlier  kept  Allan  awake 
for  nights,  as  it  certainly  had  not  kept  Roberta.  To  that 
initial  interview  Roberta  took  her  best  clothes  and  the  assur- 
ance of  her  beauty,  believing  that,  in  their  hearts,  people 
cared  more  for  that  in  a  woman  than  anything  else.  Anne 
Suffield,  it  is  true,  wrote  to  Guen  that  she  thought  there 
ought  to  be  more  mental  equality  between  a  man  like  Allan 
and  the  girl  he  was  going  to  marry:  but  Guen  knew  she 
wasn't  really  worried;  scarcely  even  surprised.  Her  belief 
that  the  chief  characteristic  of  her  children  was  that  they  did 
the  things  you  least  expected  of  them,  was  by  this  time  firmly 
rooted.  Pen,  too,  thought  Allan  ought  to  marry  somebody 
whp  would  look  after  him  (an  operation  she  thought  no  man 
could  manage  for  himself)  and  give  him  children,  but  her 
attitude  did  not  lack  affability  though  unbroadened  by  ostenta- 
tion, so  that  Roberta  had  nothing  really  to  complain  of.  Con- 
sidering her  reading  of  Roberta,  Pen  was  strictly  decent;  amaz- 
ingly decent,  according  to  Tom  (who  thought  all  women  were 
"cats")  when  you  remembered  how  Roberta's  looks  spoilt  her 
own. 

But  if  Roberta's  subjugation  of  Pen  lacked  completeness,  it 
lacked  nothing  where  Allan's  father  was  concerned.  John 
Suffield's  leaning  was  always  more  towards  looks  (in  a  woman) 
than  brains,  and  Roberta,  he  thought,  combined  the  maximum 
of  looks  with  as  many  brains  as  was  necessary.  She  was  no 
fool.  She .  was  shrewd  and  ambitious,  and  would  correct 
Allan's  idiotic  tendency  to  behave  as  though  money  didn't 
matter.  The  picture  of  Roberta  keeping  Allan's  nose  to  the 
grindstone  seemed  to  afford  Allan's  father  much  private  satis- 
faction, so  that  he  not  only  accepted  Roberta,  but  Roberta's 


ii  8  INTRUSION 

father  and  mother — a  much  more  difficult  matter.  With  an 
uncanny  skill  he  ignored  Mrs.  Leigh's  tendency  to  abolish  the 
letter  "h"  and  her  husband's  to  abolish  Conservatives  and 
landlords  and  the  private  ownership  of  land.  He  even  swal- 
lowed the  warehouse  and  Henry  Leigh's  unsatisfactory  position 
in  it,  and  was  properly  snubbing  to  Pen  when  she  said  that 
the  only  word  she  could  think  of  when  she  saw  Mrs.  Leigh 
was  avoirdupois. 

There  remained  Caryl  and  Guen. 

Caryl,  like  her  father,  had  been  instantly  subjugated.  What 
she  liked  about  Roberta  was  her  vitality;  her  unashamed  joy 
in  herself  and  in  life  and  her  unliterary  attitude  towards  it. 
Intellect,  so  Caryl  thought,  had  been  overdone  in  the  Suffield 
family,  and  Allan  had  more  than  enough  for  two  people.  Intel- 
lect was  apt  to  get  in  the  way.  There  was  such  a  thing  as 
being  too  clever.  You  might  as  well  be  dead  as  too  clever: 
you'd  be  happier,  anyway.  Roberta,  so  Caryl  said,  was  a  very 
necessary  piece  of  leaven  and  she  would  have  beautiful  babies. 

"Babies!"  said  Pen.    "She  won't  have  any!" 

"Rot,  of  course  she  will!"  Caryl  said,  "she's  just  the  sort. 
You've  only  got  to  look  at  her." 

"I  don't  know  what  you're  driving  at,"  Pen  said,  "unless 
you  mean  that  it's  the  brainless  women  who  have  the  children." 

"Who  make  the  best  job  of  it,"  amended  Caryl.  "The  brainy 
woman  either  doesn't  have  any  children,  or  doesn't  want  'em 
or  comes  to  grief  over  the  business.  Not  always,  I  know,  but 
it's  a  pretty  safe  generalisation.  I  think  Nature  ought  to  do 
better:  she  ought  to  sort  us  out.  Perhaps  she  will  a  thousand 
years  hence.  The  women  with  brains,  who  think  brains  matter 
most  and  want  to  do  the  world's  work,  won't  be  able  to  have 
children,  won't  want  'em  and  won't  be  expected  to  have  'em. 
I  daresay  the  old-fashioned  sort  of  men  will  be  rude  about 
them  in  the  Press,  but  at  least  we'll  know  where  we  are." 

Pen  laughed. 

"Which  would  you  want — the  brains  or  the  babies  ?" 

"Both,"  said  Caryl  "I  shouldn't  fit  in.  Wouldn't  it  be 
perfectly  damnable?" 


INTRUSION  119 


That,  too,  was  the  phrase  Guen  employed  when  she  received 
her  mother's  letter  with  its  news  of  Allan's  engagement.  Allan's 
own  letter  came  afterwards  and  was  brief.  Worse,  it  told  her 
nothing.  She  replied,  also  saying  nothing,  save  that  Allan  was 
to  come  and  see  her  on  Saturday. 

He  went. 

It  was,  on  the  whole,  a  painful  interview — so  painful  that 
Guen,  trying  afterwards  to  see  just  exactly  where  it  had  taken 
her,  wrote  it  all  down  in  a  long  letter  to  Madeleine,  but  tore 
it  up  when  it  was  finished  as  though  she  did  not  care,  after 
all,  to  see  quite  so  plainly  where  she  and  Allan  had  landed 
each  other;  or  did  not  care,  perhaps,  for  Madeleine  to  see  it. 
What  she  had  hoped  to  do  with  Allan  had  never  been  very 
clear,  but  whatever  it  was  she  had  failed  completely.  She  had 
done  nothing  at  all,  save  stare  at  Allan  across  a  stretch  of 
hostile  country,  shouting  out  things  in  a  language  that  had 
ceased  to  be  common.  She  could  have  cried  out  with  relief 
when  the  luncheon  bell  rang  and  she  could  escape. 

And  over  luncheon  the  conversation  showed  a  tendency  to 
dwell  on  trivialities  until  Gore,  arriving  in  the  middle  of  it, 
forced  it  for  a  time  into  the  channels  of  his  own  particular 
interests.  He  wanted  a  critical  article,  he  said,  on  Galdo's 
novels,  and  seemed  to  think  it  unreasonable  of  Allan  not  to 
know  anything  about  them.  Also,  he  wanted  articles  concerned 
with  the  Drama  of  Ideas,  and  upon  the  art  of  Nijinsky  and 
Massine.  Massine,  according  to  Gore,  had  missed  the  vital 
point  of  Scheherazade.  He  made  you  think  that  the  black 
men  desired  the  white  women,  and  Tony  thought  it  was  the 
other  way  round.  Massine,  too,  was  never  really  tragic — gro- 
tesque, almost,  at  times.  Allan  agreed  and  was  commissioned 
forthwith  to  do  the  article. 


When  Allan  had  gone  Guen  sat  down  to  write  to  Madeleine. 
Her  letter  plunged  because,  already,  Madeleine  had  the  facts. 
Caryl — a  week  ago — had  written  them,  and  Madeleine  had  not 
replied.  Neither  had  she  congratulated  Allan.  She  wouldn't, 
of  course,  Guen  said.  She  didn't,  these  days,  write — ever — to 


120  INTRUSION 

\ 

Allan.  Caryl  had  shrugged  her  shoulders.  "Well,  she  might 
stretch  a  point  in  a  case  like  this.  She  might  just  say  she 
hoped  he  would  be  happy,  anyway." 

So  far,  however,  Madeleine  had  not  done  anything  of  the 
sort.  And  Guen's  letter  was  not  intended  as  a  reminder.  It 
was  an  attempt  not  to  explain  to  Madeleine,  but  to  explain 
to  herself;  and,  anyway,  it  was  never  sent. 

I  so  badly  want  to  talk  to  you,  my  dear  Madeleine,  and 
you  aren't  here  and  there's  nobody  else.  Not  even  Tony. 
Tony  on  this  point  is  dense.  He  isn't  really  interested  in 
women  except  when  they  "do"  things,  and  Roberta  doesn't, 
so  he  says.  He  won't  see  that  she  has  already  done  too 
much.  He  thinks  I'm  making  a  fuss  over  nothing.  And 
I'm  not. 

For  Allan's  been  here — and  I  know.  It  was  like  shouting 
across  a  desert  in  a  sandstorm.  I  felt  thwarted  and  desolate, 
and  Allan  had,  all  the  time,  the  look  of  one  guarding  his 
defences.  But  I  did  once  or  twice  get  beneath  them.  I  did 
see — I  see  now — why  he's  going  through  with  this,  and  why, 
in  a  sense,  it  has  to  be.  More  than  all  else,  perhaps,  it  was 
the  look  of  him.  It  wasn't  that  he  looked  ill,  though  he 
didn't,  I  thought,  look  too  well.  He  was  pale  and  owned 
to  a  headache.  I  daresay  he  overdoes  it.  But  it  was  hi?, 
eyes  that  gave  him  away:  that  said  quite  plainly  what  his 
lips  guarded  so  jealously — for  in  words  he  told  me  nothing. 
(I  wish  I  didn't  keep  remembering  that  Allan  used  to  tell 
me  most  things.)  I  got  the  sense  of  things  having  sprung 
upon  him  from  some  hidden  comer.  Quite  suddenly  he's 
appallingly  grown-up — adult.  It's  so  absurd  that  Roberta — 
that  stupid  little  person  we  rescued  that  day  in  October  (do 
you  remember?)  from  the  rain — could  have  done  all  that. 
And  to  Allan!  Yet  you  simply  can't  look  at  him  without 
realising  how  much  "all  that"  is — and  what  it  means. 

There  isn't,  anyway,  the  least  doubt  about  that.  Nothing 
anyone  could  do  or  say  would  prevent  his  marrying  Roberta. 
And  that  is  just,  of  course,  what  he  oughtn't  to  do.  ... 
Morality  seems  a  farce  in  the  face  of  this  .  .  .  this  disaster: 
that,  I  am  sure,  is  what  it  is  or  will  be.  And  none  of  us  can 
stop  it.  That's  the  awful  thing.  It's  like  watching  a  street 
accident  that  you  can  see  coming  but  can't  prevent. 


INTRUSION  121 

It  would  be  better,  somehow,  if  Allan  believed  less  in 
marriage  and  what  it  could  do  for  you.  Not  that  he  would 
admit  that,  however.  He  wasn't  admitting  anything;  but 
for  all  that  I  felt  he  did  think  I  ought  to  understand — some- 
thing he  thought  I  didn't :  that  he  wanted,  violently,  to  make 
me,  and  that  the  violence  of  his  desire  hurt  and  puzzled 
him.  I  believe  I  said  something  disparaging  of  marriage: 
bad  taste,  of  course,  in  a  woman  happily  married.  He 
said,  "Well,  you  look  as  if  marriage  agreed  with  you,  any- 
way." I  said  that  it  ought  and  reminded  him  that  Luther 
said  it  was  what  we  were  here  for.  We  agreed  that 
Luther  had  rather  overdone  it.  I  said  that  marriage  had 
been  "overdone"  altogether;  talked  up  and  talked  down 
and  the  truth  falling,  as  truth  always  does,  of  course,  to  the 
ground. 

"But  you  like  being  married?"  he  asked  me. 

I  said  I  liked  being  married  to  Tony. 

He  said  he  supposed  that  mattered  tremendously,  whom 
one  married. 

I  said  that  it  mattered  everything. 

He  said  what  about  the  women  who  didn't  seem  to  care 
whom  they  married  as  long  as  they  married  somebody? 
What  would  they  make  of  my  "everything"? 

I  said  "Nothing";  but  that  they  wouldn't,  either,  make 
anything  of  anything  at  all.  With  them  it  was  like  jumping 
into  the  sea  to  escape  a  lion :  they  were  so  much  more  afraid 
of  the  lion. 

"You  mean  they're  much  more  afraid  of  never  being 
married  than  of  marrying  the  wrong  man?" 

I  said:  "Something  like  that.  .  Now  tell  me  about  yourself 
and  Roberta." 

Of  course,  he  didn't.  At  least,  he  didn't  tell  me  anything 
I  didn't  know  or  hadn't  guessed.  They're  to  be  married 
soon;  wretchedly  soon  because  there's  a  man  at  the  Comet 
who's  being  sent  abroad  and  they've  the  chance  of  his  house. 
Roberta,  Allan  said,  was  in  no  hurry.  "And  you?"  I  asked. 

He  wouldn't  answer  that.  I  said,  "You  are.  You  think 
marriage  is  a  miracle-worker.  It  isn't." 

Allan  said  "Good  God!  Do  you  think  I've  reasoned  it 
out  like  that?  I  only  know  that  I  can't  live  without  her." 
I  didn't  say  anything  to  that  because  I  couldn't  think  of 


122  INTRUSION 

anything  to  say  except  "But  can  you  live  with  her?"  which 
didn't  seem  adequate — or  too  adequate.  Anyway,  it  seemed 
to  me  much  more  important.  We  sat  and  looked  at  each 
other,  and  presently  Allan  said,  "I  don't  know  what  you're 
driving  at  Or  perhaps  (as  I  smiled)  I  do.  But  it  isn't  any 
good.  I'm  not  made  like  that.  Marriage  is  the  only  way 
out  for  me — for  us.  You  don't  know  Roberta.  But  you 
know  me. 

I  did. 

"Damn,"  I  said.  I  felt  savage.  I  added,  "It  would  be, 
for  you!"  I  hated  Roberta.  I'd  have  shouted  for  joy  if 
he'd  suddenly  announced  that  he  was  going  off  to  live  with 
her.  I  think  Allan  was  shocked.  Then,  thank  Heaven,  he 
got  angry  again  and  said,  "Good  God!"  and  couldn't  I 
understand ! 

I  said  I  did,  but  that  "that"  would  come  to  an  end 
before  marriage  did.  Then  I  wished  I  hadn't.  And  I 
wanted  to  cry. 

I  think,  I  always  knew  this  would  happen.  Men  like 
Allan  are  inevitably  the  victims  of  their  own  natures.  Some 
day  he  had  to  wake  up.  Somebody  was  going  to  rouse  feel- 
ings and  desires  which  till  her  coming  had  slumbered.  But 
why  is  it  that  the  person  who  can  arouse  can  so  seldom 
satisfy?  It's  just  one  little  bit  of  Allan  Roberta  can  get  at, 
and  no  more.  Only  he  doesn't  believe  it.  He  said  I  was 
unfair  to  my  sex — as  all  women  are.  Even  in  my  rage  I 
smiled  at  that.  His  precious  Roberta  had  never  had  a 
chance.  I'd  simply  got,  he  said,  to  remember  that.  We 
had  to  help  her — he  and  I  and  the  rest  of  us,  I  gathered. 
"That's  what  I  feel,"  he  said,  "that  I've  got  to  help  her. 
I  want  to  look  after  her  .  .  .  protect  her.  I  can't  explain." 

But  he  had,  of  course.  That  word  "protect"  had  given 
it  me.  Roberta's  disadvantages,  the  things  he  hated  and 
despised  and  despaired  of  in  her  had  given  him  an  object 
in  life.  Roberta,  he  thought,  needed  him,  as  none  of  us 
ever  did.  More  than  mother,  now  there's  the  new  Jan. 
That,  writ  small,  is  what  it  all  comes  down  to,  yet  it  struck 
me  then  and  it  strikes  me  now  as  ridiculous,  because  to  me 
it's  so  obvious  that  it's  Allan  who  wants  looking  after.  You'd 
have  said  so,  too,  if  you'd  heard  his  absurd  story  about  some 
missed  train,  the  parental  wrath  and  the  dragging  out  of  the 


INTRUSION  123 

family  skeleton — because  he  began  then  to  tell  me  things. 
It  was  just  here  that  the  defences  broke  down.  .  .  .  He 
threw  Roberta  at  me.  Roberta  with  her  uncongenial  home 
life,  her  dull  work  at  the  studio  and  her  parents  with  theii 
outraged  conventions.  .  .  .  She'd  thrown  them  at  Allan  often 
enough,  I've  no  doubt:  they  caught  him,  the  lot  of  them, 
on  his  vulnerable  side  that  day  after  the  missed  train. 

"You're  like  Shelley,"  I  said,  "when  Harriet  caught  him 
by  that  story  of  persecution  at  school."  But  he  isn't  really, 
because  Shelley  never  believed  in  marriage  even  when  he 
married  his  Harriet,  and  it's  pathetic  to  see  how  Allan  believes 
in  it. 

I  think  that  must  have  been  why  I  made  another  effort 
to  make  him  "see."  I  hated  Roberta,  but  I  put  her  case 
for  her.  It  wasn't  generosity:  it  was  simply  that  I  knew 
it  was  no  good  putting  his.  He  was  ready  enough  to  be 
sacrificed.  I  saw  that  so  plainly  it  terrified  me,  and  I  was 
terrified,  too,  because  he  seemed  to  be  getting  small  and 
distant.  I  had  the  sense  of  shouting  as  if  he  were  out- 
distancing me,  and  my  voice  had  to  travel  to  catch  up  with 
him.  I  had  a  mental  vision  of  myself  trailing  over  the  dusty 
distances  dragging  a  dishevelled  and  weary  Roberta  at  my 
heels,  and  what  I  said  went,  somehow,  like  this. 

"Allan,  listen  to  me.  Do  please  listen  to  me.  Let's  see 
things  as  they  are.  You're  not  going  to  be  rich.  Marriage 
on  a  small  income  makes  big  demands  on  a  girl — unfair 
demands,  doubtless,  only  if  she  cares  enough  it  doesn't  mat- 
ter so  much,  though  it's  still  unfair.  How  much  of  that 
does  Roberta  understand?  Or  haven't  you  discussed  it 
with  her?" 

Allan  said,  "She  knows,  of  course,  what  my  position  is." 

"But  does  she  know  what  it  means?  Girls  don't,  very 
often.  There'll  be  meals  to  cook,  clothes  to  mend,  rooms 
to  clean  and,  perhaps  .  .  .  babies." 

"We  needn't  have  any  babies." 

"You  may  want  them.  Oh,  not  at  first,  perhaps,  buti 
later  on." 

He  said  he  couldn't  discuss  that  with  Roberta.  Here's 
a  pretty  pair  of  modern  lovers  for  you !  There  were  actually 
things  they  couldn't  "discuss."  I  think  I  shrugged  my 
shoulders,  not  a  pretty  trick,  I  know,  in  a  plain  woman. 


124  INTRUSION 

But  I  wanted  to  shake  Allan — to  shake  sense  into  him  and 
some  of  his  fantastic  illusions  out  of  him.  And  again  I 
started  putting  Roberta's  case  for  her.  I  said: 

"Well,  I  think  you  ought  to  discuss  it,  that's  all."  (I 
seemed  to  be  getting  angrier:  the  words  kept  rushing  up 
quicker  than  I  could  get  them  out.)  I  went  on.  "You 
ought  to  tell  her  what  things  mean,  if  you  think  she  doesn't 
know;  or  do  you  want  to  marry  a  child?"  (Roberta  a 
child!  But  you  see  how  well  I  put  her  case!)  ''It  isn't  a 
pretty  fact  and  men  don't  admit  it,  I  know,  but  marriage  for 
thousands  of  women  means  just  their  automatic  conversion 
into  wife,  housekeeper,  mother,  nurse  and  maid-of-all-work. 
It's  either  worth  it  (but  never  so  entirely  worth  it  as  men 
imagine)  or  it  isn't  worth  it  at  all.  But  you  ought  to  be 
certain  that  it's  going  to  be  worth  it  for  Roberta." 

Still  Allan  said  nothing.  I  began  to  see  that  he  didn't 
mean  to  say  anything.  The  distance  between  us  increased. 
I  ploughed  after  him,  but  I  dropped  Roberta.  I  was  getting 
very  tired.  Perhaps  that  was  why  I  let  myself  go — why  I 
got  on  to  my  pet  theories  and  attacked  Allan's  ridiculous 
idea  of  marriage,  his  extraordinary  idea  of  it  as  a  miracle- 
worker.  I  used  a  lot  more  words  than  that  and  I  stopped, 
presently,  to  let  them  sink  in.  They  didn't  seem  to,  some- 
how. .  .  . 

I  plunged  again — began  to  develop  my  theories.  I  said 
that  on  this  business  of  sex  the  world  was  mad:  that  sex, 
somehow,  had  to  be  put  back  in  its  proper  place  .  .  .  that 
it  had  no  business  to  sprawl,  indecently,  as  it  does,  over  the 
whole  of  life,  and  I  attacked  the  marriage  that  has  nothing 
more  than  sex  behind  it,  declared  that  such  a  marriage 
wouldn't  do  for  Allan,  who  would  discover  that  sex  feeling 
is  the  most  fleeting  of  all  human  emotions.  You  couldn't 
build  a  future  upon  it. 

Allan  laughed.  He  laughed  and  was  crushing  and  uncon- 
vinced. He  said,  "Rubbish,  old  girl,  you  can't  underrate 
sex  like  that — or  its  power." 

I  knew  then  that  I'd  lost:  that  nothing  I  could  say  would 
touch  him.  All  the  same  I  went  on.  Heaven  only  knows 
why — or  what  I  hoped  to  achieve.  Actually,  of  course,  I 
achieved  nothing.  The  desert  between  us  flung  the  words 
back  in  my  face.  ...  I  said: 


INTRUSION  12  5 

"You're  being  stupid,  Allan  ...  or  am  I?  You  can't 
ignore  sex:  that's  as  stupid  as  overrating  it,  as  most  people 
do.  The  truth  is  somewhere  in  between.  Marriage — the 
best  sort  of  marriage — isn't  all  sex,  and  love,  even  sexual 
love,  isn't  what  the  world  thinks  it:  it's  finer  than  mere 
sentimentality,  nobler  than  desire.  It's  comradeship  and 
understanding  and  community  of  interests  and  toleration 
and  recognition  of  the  soul  in  each." 

Then  I  saw  Allan's  face,  and  suddenly  I  found  myself 
throwing  Roberta  at  him  again. 

"If  Roberta  can't  give  you  that,  Allan,  don't,  for  God's 
sake,  marry  her.  Because — ultimately — that's  what  you're 
going  to  want." 

Well,  that  was  the  end,  because  Allan  looked  at  me  and 
said  in  that  quiet  way  of  his,  "My  dear  old  girl,  do  you 
know  that  you're  positively  shouting?"  I  said — idiotically — 
"I  had  to  ...  you  wouldn't  have  heard  else."  Then  we 
both  laughed,  but  it  was  the  end  right  enough.  Allan 
began  talking  suddenly  of  the  police  strike  and  the  mobs  at 
Liverpool,  and  I  became  intelligent  again  and  stopped 
wanting  to  laugh  or  to  cry.  I  saw  that  he  wasn't  going  to 
escape. 

That,  somehow,  wasn't  a  fact  that  made  you  want  either 
to  laugh  or  to  cry.  You  accepted  it,  quietly,  as  you  always 
do  accept  the  inevitable.  There's  always  a  time  when  you 
know  you  can't  do  anything,  when  the  most  rebellious  of  us 
sit  down  and  fold  our  hands. 

Well,  there  it  is.  You'd  have  said  that  after  the  war — 
France — it  couldn't  happen.  The  war  is  supposed  to  have 
cured  young  men  of  making  fools  of  themselves  ...  to 
have  given  them  insight  and  understanding.  .  .  .  The  only 
thing  against  that  theory  is  that  it  isn't  true.  The  war 
has  shifted  standards — and  muddled  them.  Experience  piled 
Pelion  upon  Ossa  is  worse  than  no  experience  at  all,  and 
it  leaves  the  more  sensitive  open  to  attack  at  too  many 
points.  With  Allan  Roberta  must  have  had  an  easy  task 
(and  you'll  see  I'm  putting  it  on  to  Roberta.  I'm  so  sure 
that  missed  train  had  more  significance  than  meets  the  eye). 
Allan  stood  defenceless :  the  walls  were  down.  She  had  him 
all  ways,  through  his  reformist  sense;  through  his  eyes  and 
through  his  newly  awakened  instincts  that  had  slept  too 


126  INTRUSION 

long.  To  a  Roberta  it  couldn't  have  been  difficult,  for  she 
is,  to  look  at,  the  most  delightful  creature.  And  the  worst 
of  it  is  you'd  swear  there  was  something  behind  the  mask. 
She  doesn't  look  empty  and  yet  I'm  sure  she  is.  There  just 
isn't  anything  there  at  all — that  matters. 

I  don't  see  that  there's  anything  to  be  done,  except  to 
smudge  out  of  my  mind  all  these  beliefs  and  conjectures  con- 
cerning Roberta  which  yet  seem  so  damnably  like  certainties 
and  will  take,  I  can  tell  you,  some  erasing.  I've  got  to  start 
afresh :  play  the  Optimist,  believe  that  Allan  is  getting  what 
he  wants  .  .  .  what  he  wants  now  .  .  .  without  asking  myself 
how  long  he's  going  to  want  it  and  whether  he's  going  to 
get  it — actually — after  all.  Even  there,  you  see,  I  don't  trust 
Roberta. 

You  see,  too,  how  difficult  it  is  to  do  the  smudging  with 
any  will.  But  I  must.  At  least,  Roberta  shall  have  her 
chance — even  with  me,  who  don't  want,  in  the  least,  to  give 
it  her. 

It  was  just  here  that  Guen  broke  off  and  tore  her  letter  up, 
as  if  she  realised  that  Roberta  must  have  her  "chance,"  too, 
with  Madeleine.  And,  anyway,  her  pen  had  been  running 
away  with  her. 


Allan  and  Roberta  were  to  be  married  in  August.  The 
young  man  at  the  Comet  had  gone  off  earlier  to  his  foreign 
appointment  than  was  expected  and  the  opportunity  of  securing 
his  house  was  too  good  to  be  missed.  So,  at  least,  Roberta 
said  to  Caryl,  who  agreed.  Guen  agreed,  too,  but  stood  there 
faring  out  across  the  months  to  come  as  across  centuries. 
Caryl,  catching  her  at  it  on  one  of  her  home  visits,  waxed 
.scornful. 

"My  dear  old  thing,"  she  said,  "all  this  fuss  because  Bobbie 
isn't  'booky'  or  'brainy!'  You're  as  bad  as  Pen.  Yes,  you 
&re,  you're  snobs,  both  of  you.  For  Pen  Bobbie's  family  isn't 
>ood  enough  (Pen's  beastly  about  Mrs.  Leigh  and  she's  a 
'dear!);  for  you  it's  her  brains.  I  should  have  thought  Allan 
had  more  than  enough  for  two.  As  a  family  we  seem  rather 
o  run  to  brains." 


INTRUSION  127 

"It's  a  good  fault,  isn't  it?"  Guen  asked. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Caryl.  "I  can't  help  wishing  some- 
times that  my  features  got  on  a  little  better  together.  It 
must  be  jolly  to  have  a  face  that's  as  ...  harmonious  .  .  . 
as  Bobbie's.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to  buy  fresh  faces  at  the 
shops." 

"It  is — more  or  less,"  Guen  said.  "If  we  think  it  worth 
while." 

"Oh,  that!"  said  Caryl. 

Guen  laughed. 

"My  dear  child,  you  should  have  taken  the  precaution  of 
falling  in  love  with  a  man  who  never  looks  at  faces." 

"What  do  you  mean?  Can't  one  get  tired  of  one's  mug 
without  your  drawing  unwarrantable  conclusions?" 

"Quite,"  said  Guen.  "I  apologise.  Your  aspirations  after 
beauty  are,  of  course,  strictly  impersonal." 

But  as  though  she  knew  they  weren't  she  opened  the  subject 
later  with  Pen,  who  since  Guen's  marriage  had  come  with  Tom 
and  Master  Jan  to  live  at  Adelaide  Lodge.  And  Pen  wasn't  a 
bit  satisfactory  this  evening:  a  little  distraite,  too,  for  she  was 
bathing  her  small  son.  Oh  yes,  she  believed  Caryl  still  saw  that 
young  man  Merrick  at  the  Hestons.  Why  not?  There  wasn't 
anything  in  that — now.  Oh,  on  his  side  once,  perhaps;  but 
Caryl  had  choked  him  off.  So  Jack  Heston  had  said,  anyway, 
just  as  she'd  choked  him  off.  Caryl  hadn't  any  use  for  men 
in  that  sort  of  way.  She  was  like  Madeleine.  To  both  of  them 
men  were  like  tables  and  chairs,  nice  useful  things  that  were 
there  when  you  wanted  them.  They  only  wanted  men  as 
friends.  .  .  .  Pen  gathered  that  young  Merrick  was  interested 
at  the  moment  in  Marjorie's  quarter.  But  Guen  wasn't 
Marjorie  had  never  been  anything  to  Guen  but  a  pink  and  white 
china  doll  with  quantities  of  fair,  fluffy  hair,  who  was  bound 
to  get  fat,  anyway.  .  .  .  "Queer,  isn't  it?"  Pen  said,  "that 
Caryl's  like  that  about  men,  because  she's  so  fond  of 
children.  .  .  ." 

But  Guen  had  ceased  to  listen.  She  had  forgotten  Caryl  and 
the  significance  (or  otherwise)  of  Richard  Merrick.  She  was 
watching  the  rosy  curves  of  Baby  Jan's  body  and  wishing  they 
had  given  him  some  other  name. 


BOOK    II 
CHAPTER   ONE 


ALLAN  and  Roberta  spent  their  honeymoon  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight.  Allan  had  suggested  a  tiny  village  he  knew  by 
the  Devon  sea,  but  Roberta  had  stuck  to  Shanklin. 
She  did  not  want,  she  said,  to  be  buried  alive  in  Devon. 

Later,  it  occurred  to  Allan  that  Roberta  did  not  intend  to 
be  buried  alive  anywhere  at  all.  Quite  early  she  let  him  see 
that  very  plainly  indeed.  "We  may  just  as  well  look  at  the 
place  now  we're  here,"  she  said,  and  frowned  upon  his  tendency 
to  go  and  sit  with  her  upon  the  cliffs.  Roberta  hadn't  bought 
her  fine  clothes  for  the  purpose  of  sitting  in  them  upon  the 
cliffs.  And  even  from  Allan's  point  of  view  the  cliffs  were  not 
wholly  satisfactory,  for  beyond  Sandown  their  walks  were  cir- 
cumscribed by  barbed  wire  and  notices  which  warned  them  of 
unexploded  hand  grenades  and  poison  gas.  Roberta,  who 
thought  the  war  had  stopped  long  ago,  found  them  amusing; 
Allan,  who  knew  it  hadn't,  did  not.  More,  too,  than  that. 
He  was  constitutionally  incapable  of  connecting  the  war  with 
anything  amusing  or  "funny,"  as  Roberta  put  it.  Roberta 
thought  this  a  pity,  for  in  this  connection  she  was  very  proud 
of  him,  and  was  given  to  saying  sweetly  at  their  private  hotel, 
"My  husband,  you  know,  will  never  talk  about  his  experiences 
in  France.  No  one  would  ever  believe  he  has  three  wound 
stripes." 

Allan,  of  course,  detested  the  hotel,  though  he  liked  the  spot 
where  they  had  built  it — up  there  on  the  esplanade  they  had 
named  after  Keats,  which  was  generous  of  them  since  Keats, 
visiting  Shanklin  for  the  first  time,  had  decided  against  it  and 
gone  on  to  Carisbrooke.  Allan,  as  he  might  have  known  he 
would,  had  decided  against  the  hotel  before  he  had  got  through 

128 


INTRUSION  129 

the  first  evening's  dinner.  Allan  had  never  liked  the  people  he 
found  in  private  hotels  and  "superior"  boarding-houses,  and 
after  five  years  of  war  it  was  not  to  be  supposed  he  would  like 
them  any  better.  He  hated  their  approval  of  himself  as  a  boy 
who  had  "done  his  bit"  (which  even  his  aloofness  and  his 
unpopular  opinions  could  not  disturb),  and  he  hated  their  air 
of  having,  as  a  class,  used  up  all  the  available  backbone  of 
England.  But  he  was  amused  by  their  belief  in  themselves,  in 
Lloyd  George  and  the  Almighty,  and  by  their  conception  of 
the  Deity  as  a  sort  of  British  Field  Marshal  raised  possibly  to 
the  nth  degree.  He  knew  that  many  of  them  had  "given" 
sons  in  this  cause  of  Humanity  that  was  the  War:  he  knew 
that  others  had  given  money;  that  still  others  had  made  it; 
but  he  only  saw  that  they  all  had  excellent  appetites  and  an 
air  of  justifying  the  genial  optimism  of  Browning  to  the 
remnants  of  a  youthful  generation  that  had  suffered  from  it. 

It  was  during  that  first  week  of  pinpricks,  when  Allan  was 
wondering,  at  savage  intervals,  why  he  hadn't  insisted  on  that 
cottage  on  the  Devon  coast,  that  there  arrived  a  young  man 
who  came  in  heavily  and  unexpectedly  on  Allan's  side  when 
these  discussions  arose.  He  had  brought  with  him  a  copy  of 
Siegfried  Sassoon's  war  poems  and  a  small  anthology  of  Verse 
Written  in  War  Time  which  Allan  hadn't  seen.  Inside  both 
of  these  their  owner  had  scrawled  his  name — Martyn  Thorp — 
and  Martyn  Thorp  and  Allan  took  an  instantaneous  and  warm 
liking  to  each  other,  based  upon  their  agreement  upon  the 
subject  of  war  poetry  and  the  people  in  boarding-houses — who 
didn't  read  it.  Martyn,  it  transpired,  was  at  the  private  hotel 
because  in  a  day  or  two  his  people  were  to  join  him  there. 
They  would,  so  Martyn  said,  fit  in:  they  liked  "that  sort  of 
place."  Martyn,  like  Allan,  did  not;  but  "we  haven't  had 
a  holiday  together  for  years,"  he  explained.  "The  mater  was 
keen  on  it.  You  see,  they  sent  me  to  Mesopotamia.  You  didn't 
get  much  leave  there.  .  .  ." 

But  even  before  the  arrival  of  the  parents  who  liked  "this 
sort  of  place"  and  called  Roberta  "that  charming-looking 
girl,"  and  admired  her  clothes,  they  did  not  see  too  much  of 
Martyn  Thorp,  certainly  not  as  much  as  Roberta  would  have 
liked.  Martyn  had  found  favour  in  her  sight,  never  having 
made  the  mistake  of  talking  to  her  about  books  and  politics  and 
dull  things  of  that  description.  Also  it  wasn't  difficult  to  see 


130  INTRUSION 

that  he  admired  Roberta  tremendously  and  considered  Allan  a 
"lucky  dog."  He  was  younger  than  Allan,  and,  for  all  his  talk 
of  the  soldier-poets,  took  life  a  good  deal  less  seriously.  The 
strain  of  natural  gloom  in  Allan  was  altogether  missing  in  young 
Thorp.  In  a  discussion  he  was  always  on  the  right  side: 
theoretically  he  was  sound,  but  when  it  came  to  practicalities 
he  saw — none  clearer — the  folly  of  running  your  head  against 
a  brick  wall.  He  wore  an  air  of  cheerful  pessimism,  as  of  one 
who  realises  that  the  world  is  pretty  nearly  everything  it 
shouldn't  be,  but  who  realises,  too,  that  he  is  not  the  man  to 
cope  with  it.  The  only  criticism  which  at  this  stage  Roberta 
had  to  level  against  her  new  acquaintance  was  that  he  was  over- 
proficient  in  the  gentle  art  of  making  himself  scarce.  He  knew 
well  enough  (before  Roberta  told  him)  that  she  and  Allan  were 
on  their  honeymoon,  but  she  had  not  meant  that  to  imply  quite 
so  much  as  he  seemed  to  think  it  did.  She  had  only  meant  to 
quicken  his  interest  in  her,  to  deepen  the  atmosphere  of 
romance  with  which,  so  far  as  the  hotel  was  concerned,  she  was 
quite  well  aware  she  had  been  surrounded.  All  Roberta's 
instincts  were  histrionic:  she  played  always  to  an  audience. 
Allan,  to  her  surprise,  was  slightly  annoyed  that  she  had  "given 
them  away"  and  reflected  that  a  private  hotel  was  a  ridiculous 
place  in  which  to  spend  a  honeymoon.  But  Roberta  had 
laughed. 

"Well,  I  did  it  for  you.  I  thought  you  believed  two's 
company.  You're  not  very  grateful." 

Two  days  later  Allan  suggested  spending  the  rest  of  their 
holiday  in  a  creeper-clad  house  which  they  passed  on  one  of 
their  walks  and  which  displayed  the  phrase  "Board  Residence." 
Roberta  was  amazed. 

"Leave  the  hotel?  Don't  be  absurd,  Allan.  All  my  clothes 
are  there.  Besides,  they'd  make  you  pay  for  the  fortnight, 
anyway." 

"Oh,  let  them!"  said  Allan.  "It  would  be  worth  it.  I'd 
be  much  nicer  here.  .  .  .  You'd  see  ...  and  we  could  do  just 
as  we  liked." 

"But,  Allan,  we  do  as  we  like  now  .  .  .  and  you're  quite 
nice.  Really,  you  are.  .  .  .  I'm  quite  satisfied  with  you." 

"Then  you  won't  come?" 

"Don't  be  silly,  Allan;  you  know  we  can't  do  it.  ...  It'd 
look  so  silly." 


INTRUSION  131 

"To  all  that  crowd?  P'raps;  but  what  do  they  matter? 
We  shan't  see  any  of  them  again." 

"Why,  you  said  only  the  other  day  how  nice  it  would  be  if 
Mr.  Thorp'd  come  and  see  us  when  we  get  back." 

"I  know.  Thorp's  different.  We  could  write  to  him  from 
here.  He'd  understand.  I  think  you  might,  Bobbie.  It'd  be 
such  a  lark." 

But  Roberta  didn't  see  it  as  a  lark  at  all. 

"Oh,  Allan,  dear,"  she  said,  "I  just  love  being  at  the  hotel. 
Don't  be  a  beast  and  drag  me  away  just  when  I'm  having  such 
a  good  time!" 

So  Allan  gave  up  the  idea  and  went  back  and  dressed  for 
dinner  and  was  profoundly  wretched,  because  he  couldn't  forget 
how  happy  he  would  have  been  if  Roberta  had  agreed  to  come 
away  with  him  to  the  creeper-clad  house  on  the  Ventnor  Road. 
That  was  all,  really,  that  mattered — that  she  should  have 
wanted  to  come.  And  she  hadn't. 

Allan  chose  that  evening  after  dinner  to  ask  Martyn  if  he 
would  come  and  see  them  when  they  all  got  back  to  London. 
Martyn  said  "Rather,"  and  that  Roberta  must  come  down  and 
have  tea  with  the  mater.  The  Thorps  lived,  it  seemed,  at 
Bromley.  They  spoke  of  it  with  pride  as  "the  town." 

"Of  course,  we've  only  got  a  tiny  little  house,"  Roberta  told 
him.  "Just  six  rooms,  you  know,  and  a  bath-room." 

"I  fancy,"  said  young  Thorp,  with  his  frank  and  charming 
smile,  "that  I  shan't  come  exactly  to  see  the  house,  you  know." 

Roberta  blushed,  and  Allan  reflected  that  it  was  really  time 
he  began  to  make  some  friends.  He  had  never  at  any  time  had 
many,  for  Maurice  Linton  had  somehow  made  other  friend- 
ships unnecessary.  Here — and  on  his  honeymoon — he  found 
himself  yearning  for  that  old  circle  of  talk  and  aspiration  which 
had  been  made  up  of  himself,  Guen,  Madeleine  and  Maurice. 
How  they  had  talked  and  talked,  with  the  keynote  always  in 
harmony  and  that  invisible  thread  holding  them  all  together! 
His  thoughts  of  it  now  seemed  to  constitute  a  veritable  elegy 
of  friendship. 


Vaguely  Allan  understood  that  he  was  disappointed  with  this 
first  holiday  with  Roberta.     Perhaps  that  was  always  how  you 


132  INTRUSION 

felt  if  you  elected  to  spend  your  honeymoon  in  a  private  hotel. 
Perhaps  it  served  you  right. 

But  it  was  more  than  the  hotel  of  which  Allan  was  critical. 
His  feeling  of  disappointment  extended  beyond  the  hotel  garden 
and  its  edge  of  green  cliff  to  the  whole  of  the  Garden  of 
England,  or  as  much  of  'it  as  he  managed  to  see.  He  did  not 
care  at  all  for  the  Isle  of  Wight.  He  found  its  air  enervating 
and  its  inhabitants  conservative-minded  and  suffering  from 
many  other  of  the  drawbacks  of  life  on  an  island.  Roberta, 
however,  thrived  upon  the  warmth  and  did  not  object  to  the 
condition  of  mind  of  its  inhabitants.  She  thoroughly  enjoyed 
the  drives  about  the  island,  and  laughed  at  the  interest  Allan 
took  in  Swinburne's  grave  at  Bonchurch  and  his  need  to  photo- 
graph it.  It  seemed  to  Roberta  that  all  the  people  who  had 
become  "classics"  had  lived  or  stayed  some  time  or  other  at 
Bonchurch.  Tennyson  had  come  (and  lady  admirers,  so  the 
guide-book  said,  had  cut  up  his  hat  between  them),  and 
Thackeray,  Dickens  and  Macaulay.  But  of  them  all  Roberta 
most  resented  Macaulay,  because  Allan  walked  her  along  the 
road  to  Ventnor  to  find  the  house  where  he  had  once  resided, 
and  she  thought  it  thoughtful  of  Swinburne  to  have  lived  so 
near  to  the  place  where  he  had  intended  to  be  buried.  She 
thought,  too,  that  Allan  might  have  taken  a  photograph  of  her 
sitting  on  the  gate  of  East  Dene,  but  Allan  wouldn't  even  let 
her  sit  on  the  gate,  but  had  dragged  her  into  the  churchyard, 
where  he  used  up  his  films  on  Swinburne's  grave  and  St. 
Boniface  church.  On  another  day  they  went  to  St.  Helens 
and  Sea  view  (where  the  house  where  Madeleine  had  recently 
lived  was  marked  "To  let"),  and  on  another  to  Carisbrooke, 
where  they  tried  to  decide  whether  it  was  Mary  Queen  of  Scots 
or  Charles  the  First,  or  neither,  who  was  imprisoned  in  the 
castle  there.  Roberta,  on  the  whole,  was  inclined  to  think  that 
her  honeymoon  was  eminently  successful.  Certainly  she  had 
never  been  so  well  dressed  before  nor  stayed  in  so  excellently 
appointed  a  house  (it  wasn't  Roberta  who'd  find  fault  with 
the  hotel!).  Her  days  were  pleasant  beyond  all  doubt.  In  the 
mornings  she  bathed  (which  means  that  she  donned  a  pretty 
bathing  costume  and  dabbled  about  on  the  edge,  withstanding 
Allan's  invitations  to  "come  out  here  where  it's  deep"),  and 
in  the  afternoons  she  went  for  a  drive  and  returned  just  in  time 
to  dress  herself  prettily  for  dinner.  To  any  but  the  Robertas 


INTRUSION  133 

of  the  world  it  may  well  sound  dull;  but  Roberta  was  very  far 
from  finding  it  dull.  She  was  admired  and  envied,  and  because 
she  loved  being  admired  and  envied  she  was  happy.  Marriage 
had  given  her  a  strange  new  dignity  and  importance  that  she 
found  extremely  pleasurable.  It  amused  her  to  watch  the  look 
that  came  over  people's  faces  when  their  eyes  alighted  on  her 
wedding-ring.  She  thrilled  when  someone  said,  "My  dear,  that 
child's  actually  married  to  that  nice  young  man.  .  .  .  Aren't 
they  a  charming-looking  pair?" 

They  were,  rather,  Roberta  thought. 


There  was,  of  course,  another  side  to  marriage.  .  .  . 

Roberta  had  summed  it  up  when  two  days  before  her  wedding 
she  had  said  suddenly  to  Allan  that,  of  course,  they  weren't 
going  to  have  any  children.  In  no  sense  whatever  had  what 
she  had  to  say  about  it  degenerated  into  discussion:  it  remained, 
first  and  last,  Roberta's  personal  declaration.  Yet  the  very 
way  in  which  she  had  broken  in  upon  the  subject  had  offended 
something  within  Allan.  It  wasn't  that  he  thought  such  a 
subject  should  not  be  discussed,  but  only  that  Roberta  hadn't 
done  it;  she  had  simply  taken  her  stand,  given  him,  as  it  were, 
an  ultimatum.  It  was  as  though  there,  at  the  outset,  she  had 
been  defending  herself  against  him.  The  little  spurt  with 
which  the  words  had  come  out;  the  deepening  of  her  colour 
and  her  averted  eyes  had  given  him  a  feeling  of  shame;  some- 
how these  things  had  stamped  their  relationship  unmistakably, 
as  a  thing  not  really  intimate,  not  beautiful  or  delicate.  It 
had  no  soul.  Neither  had  it  created,  so  far,  any  soul  in 
Roberta,  nor  given  her  a  robuster  view  of  life.  Still  she  dab- 
bled about  on  its  edge,  untouched  by  desire  or  passion,  yet 
slightly  afraid  that  life  might,  at  this  juncture,  become  incon- 
venient or  painful.  Certain  things  in  life  were  still  "horrid," 
and  really  nice  people  didn't  talk  about  them.  But,  at  least, 
Allan  realised  that  between  himself  and  Roberta  there  was 
nothing  whatever  of  that  sense  of  comradeship  which  your 
modern  lovers  demand  and  with  which  Guen  and  Antony  had 
scaled  the  heights.  You  couldn't  see  them  together  without 
knowing  they  had  done  that;  but  Guen  and  Antony,  so  Allan 
thought,  were  exceptions.  The  average  marriage  wasn't  in  the 


134  INTRUSION 

least  like  that:  was  a  good  deal  more  like  this  queer  union  of 
his  with  Roberta.  Here,  just  a  week  after  marriage,  he  was 
very  far  from  seeing  love  as  Guen  and  Antony  saw  it.  To  him 
love,  on  the  one  side,  was  a  disturbing  physical  condition;  on 
the  other,  a  deep-rooted  sense  of  protectorship,  a  desire  less  to 
possess  than  to  be  possessed;  a  craving  of  the  blood  and  the 
spirit,  unsatisfied,  perhaps  unsatisfiable.  .  .  . 

Unsatisfied  he  certainly  was,  and  with  a  feverish  longing 
for  something  with  which  he  seemed  never  to  come  within 
hailing  distance.  That  declaration  of  Roberta's  had  not  pre- 
pared him,  somehow,  for  the  coldness  he  had  discovered  beneath 
the  warm,  vital  look  of  her.  Neither — though  he  had  not 
assumed  that  her  feeling  for  him  reached  anything  like  the 
degree  of  intensity  of  his  for  her — had  he  guessed  at  the  frigid 
voluptuousness  of  her  nature,  which  confronted  him  now  at 
every  turn.  Yet  though  in  a  sense  he  suffered  by  this  cold 
reserve  she  brought  to  marriage,  in  another  it  comforted  him. 
It  slew  for  him  those  old  hideous  doubts  which  it  disturbed 
him  now  to  find  he  had  never  altogether  succeeded  in  driving 
out  of  some  corner  of  his  brain,  and  it  confirmed  that  pathetic 
tearful  statement  of  Roberta's  that  she  was  not  "that  sort."  He 
did  not  realise  (any  more  than  she)  that  her  virtue  was  merely 
indifference;  man-like,  he  thought  she  was  still  unroused: 
thought,  even,  that  he  could  rouse  her.  He  believed  there 
were  things — deep  things  and  profound — which  were  there  to 
be  awakened.  He  saw  her  soul  as  a  still  water,  running  deep, 
not  realising  that  it  was  an  artificial  lake  in  a  prettily  laid-out 
park.  He  assumed  still  that  somewhere  slept  the  maternal 
instinct  he  believed  to  be  in  every  woman,  and  his  faith  in  it 
and  in  its  power  was  very  nearly  pathetic.  Only  he  kept  it  to 
himself.  Roberta's  opinion  of  him  during  those  first  two  weeks 
soared  unexpectedly.  She  found  him  kind,  good-tempered  and 
considerate.  She  wrote  to  Tommy  Carew  that  he  wasn't  in  the 
very  least  "horrid"  or  "beastly,"  and  quite  saw  her  point  about 
the  children. 

He  did,  of  course,  for  at  this  stage  he  simply  could  not 
imagine  Roberta  as  the  mother  of  his  children.  He  saw  her 
as  herself  a  child — wilful,  ignorant  and  ill  trained;  but  he 
saw,  too,  that  it  was  Roberta  he  wanted:  nothing  and  no  one 
else.  And  Roberta — he  felt  it  in  his  bones! — was  going  to  be 
a  sufficient  responsibility. 


INTRUSION  135 

But  for  all  that  he  took  with  him,  when  presently  the  holiday 
came  to  an  end,  a  vague  sense  of  disappointment  and  a  muddled 
conviction  that  a  honeymoon  was  a  greatly  overrated  affair. 
Once  again,  it  seemed,  life  in  its  essence  had  managed, 
somehow,  to  slip  through  his  fingers. 


CHAPTER  TWO 

1 

THE  little  house  which  the  adventurer  abroad  had  vacated 
in  Allan  and  Roberta's  interest  was  distant  not  more 
than  half  an  hour  from  Adelaide  Lodge  and  rather  less 
from  Roberta's  old  home  in  Manningtree  Avenue.  That,  at 
the  beginning,  seemed  to  be  the  only  drawback  which  Roberta 
had  to  urge  against  it,  and  then  but  faintly,  because  the  incon- 
veniences attaching  to  the  keeping  of  two  sets  of  relatives 
round  the  corner  were  not  unduly  pressing  there  in  the  middle 
of  September,  with  both  sets  obligingly  taking  late  holidays. 

At  first  the  idea  of  living  in  Number  Sixteen  Meldon  Avenue 
had  sent  Roberta  into  transports  of  delight  that  were  quashed 
not  at  all  by  Allan's  disapproval  of  white  paint  for  a  front  doof 
and  his  doubts  of  her  capacity  to  wrestle  with  the  brass  fittings 
which  adorned  it.  But  on  his  initiative  the  door,  during  thfr 
fortnight  in  Shanklin,  had  suffered  a  sea  change.  It  had  been 
painted  dark  green,  and  the  fittings  were  brass  no  longer,  but 
black,  a  scheme  which  Allan  had  intended  to  make  general 
throughout  the  house,  until  he  saw  the  bill,  which  dashed  his 
enthusiasm  so  considerably  that  Roberta  had  been  allowed  to 
keep  her  beloved  white  paint.  A  little  later  she  loved  it  a  good 
deal  less.  "It  would  be  all  right,"  she  said,  when  this  stage 
had  been  reached,  "if  we  only  had  a  servant."  That  was 
Allan's  whole  case,  he  said.  The  people  who  built  houses  that 
size  had  no  right  to  go  on  the  principle  of  servants.  "You'll 
have  to  get  Mrs.  Noakes  to  look  after  it,"  he  told  her. 

Mrs.  Noakes  was  the  charwoman.  She  came  once  a  week  to 
"turn  out."  But  Mrs.  Noakes  no  more  than  Roberta  cared 
for  the  cleaning  of  white  paint.  Between  them  it  suffered 
dismally. 

For  Roberta's  transports  of  delight  over  Number  Sixteen 
Meldon  Avenue  were  early  and  considerably  modified.  There 
were  other  things,  it  transpired,  which  she  disliked  quite  a* 

136 


INTRUSION  137 

much  as  the  cleaning  of  white  paint.  "Messing  about  in  a 
kitchen"  was  one  of  them,  and  sweeping  and  dusting  were 
others.  Also  she  was  appalled  at  the  rate  with  which  stockings 
and  underclothing  wore  themselves  into  holes.  Roberta  hated 
sewing:  it  irked  her  unspeakably,  and  she  had  no  "method." 
It  was  Allan  (roused  to  action  by  the  desperate  plight  of  his 
shirts  and  socks)  who  hit  at  length  upon  sorting  their  defaulting 
belongings  into  two  neat  piles  which  he  identified  to  Roberta 
as  the  "Must  be  Dones"  and  the  "May  be  Lefts."  The  chief 
characteristic  of  the  "Must  be  Dones"  proved,  however,  to 
be  a  decided  tendency  to  find  their  way  into  the  "May  be 
Lefts,"  but  Roberta  (perhaps  also  roused  to  some  sort  of  action 
by  the  desperate  plight  of  her  own  belongings)  at  least  made 
some  effort  to  suppress  it.  Things  there  did  begin  to  improve. 

But,  taken  altogether,  this  business  of  housework  and  cook- 
ing and  mending  certainly  took  the  fine  edge  off  the  romance  of 
that  smart  hotel  on  Keats  Green  at  Shanklin.  These  things  of 
the  kitchen  spoiled  her  hands  and  made  life  commonplace. 
Besides,  it  seemed  so  outrageous  that  she,  Roberta,  who  had 
sat  in  all  attitudes  and  in  nearly  all  costumes  or  (almost)  no 
costume  at  all  for  her  portrait,  and  had  written  down  appoint- 
ments in  a  book  and  been  charming  to  people  who  made  them, 
should  have  to  descend  to  work  of  this  menial  description.  She 
was  bitterly  disappointed  that  Allan's  income  would  not  run 
to  a  servant,  and  was  of  the  opinion  that  insurance  clerks  were 
shamefully  underpaid. 

Allan  agreed  with  her. 

So  did  Miss  Tommy  Carew,  who  was  lazy  and  worked  as 
little  as  she  could,  and  whom  Roberta's  mother  credited  with 
having  discovered  a  means  of  livelihood  which  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  work — on  the  cinema,  or  elsewhere.  But 
Roberta's  mother — so  Roberta  said — had  a  really  nasty  mind. 
Miss  Carew  these  days,  however,  certainly  had  a  good  deal  of 
time  on  her  hands,  judging  by  the  amount  she  was  able  to  spend 
in  a  polite  paraphrase  of  her  conviction  that  Roberta,  with  her 
advantages,  ought  to  have  done  better  for  herself.  She  said 
this  in  a  surprising  number  of  ways,  sitting  in  her  elegant 
clothes  in  the  little  drawing-room  of  Number  Sixteen,  of  which 
Roberta  was  very  proud.  The  drawing-room  furniture  was 
John  Suffield's  wedding  present  to  Allan  and  Roberta  and, 
Allan  said,  "looked"  like  him.  There  was  no  nonsense  about 


138  INTRUSION 

it.  It  was  solid  and  good,  and  was  regarded  by  Allan  as  a 
really  admirable  collection  of  the  things  he  hated  most  in  the 
furnishing  line.  But  Roberta  had  no  fault  to  find  with  the 
room  save  that  it  had  no  pictures — unless  you  counted  (as 
Roberta  certainly  didn't)  the  two  things  by  that  young  man 
Linton,  who  had  died  in  prison  as  a  C.O.  Allan,  so  he  said, 
couldn't  afford  the  pictures  he  wanted  and  wouldn't  afford  the 
others.  Tommy  agreed  that  the  drawing-room  was  rather 
"nice"  and  was  negative  about  the  pictures,  preferring 
photographs — of  herself. 

"I  can't  see,  my  dear,"  she  said  to  Roberta,  "why  you  were 
in  such  a  hurry  to  give  up  your  job  with  Roydon.  Especially 
as  you  aren't  going  to  have  a  little  family.  But  perhaps  Mr. 
Allan  objects  to  his  wife  earning  some  money  of  her  own?" 

Roberta  didn't  know.  That  point  with  Allan  had  never 
arisen.  She  had  left  the  office  because  she  was  tired  of  it: 
because  she  thought  she  was  worth  "something  better  than  an 
office."  She  had  never  intended  to  go  there  after  her  marriage, 
but  she  had  meant  to  go  on  with  her  sittings  for  Roydon. 
Allan,  however,  had  objected,  and  there,  for  the  present,  the. 
matter  had  come  to  rest.  But  listening  to  what  Tommy  waft 
saying  about  Woman's  economic  independence,  she  sensed  bat" 
tie.  Also  she  thought  how  clever  Tommy  was  and  how  well 
she  talked,  for  this  afternoon  Miss  Carew  warmed  to  her  subject. 
She  knew  a  great  number  of  arguments  against  the  economic 
dependence  of  women;  mostly  the  wrong  ones,  but  as  Roberta 
did  not  know  this  she  went  on  pouring  out  tea  and  thinking 
how  clever  Tommy  was  and  how  beautiful — and  lucky.  If 
she  hadn't  won  that  newspaper  competition  prize  nobody  would 
have  known  how  clever  a  cinema  actress  she  was.  And  Roberta 
remembered  that  she  had  wept  because  her  mother  wouldn't 
let  her  enter  for  the  competition.  So  nobody  would  ever  know 
whether  she  was  any  good  on  the  pictures  or  not.  Besides, 
on  the  pictures  you  earned  a  good  deal  of  money;  you  only 
worked  when  you  chose,  and  did  not  need  to  spoil  your  hands 
with  the  cooking  of  dinners  and  washing  up. 

But  presently  Miss  Carew  went  off  to  Paris;  the  holiday- 
makers  in  Devon  and  Cornwall  came  home,  and  suddenly  the 
weather  turned  cold  and  a  new  domestic  terror  was  added  to 
Roberta's  life  in  the  shape  of  a  fire,  which  became  a  necessary 
adjunct  to  breakfast. 


INTRUSION  139 

Roberta's  capacities,  however,  seemed  to  stop  short  of  the 
creation  of  a  fire.  For  three  mornings  she  struggled  with  the 
task,  for  three  mornings  in  succession  Allan  signed  the  late  book 
at  the  office,  and  on  the  fourth  Roberta  was  led,  weeping,  from 
the  cold  fire-place  to  lay  breakfast  in  the  kitchen,  which  could 
be  warmed  by  the  gas  oven,  whilst  Allan  struggled  with  the 
collection  of  sticks  and  paper  and  knobs  of  coal  which  Roberta 
had  failed  to  convert  into  a  fire. 

His  success,  so  Roberta  thought,  was  unearthly ;  also  it  estab- 
lished a  precedent,  for  throughout  the  winter  Allan  continued 
to  rise  a  quarter  of  an  hour  earlier  and  there  was  a  fire  each 
morning  in  time  for  breakfast. 

But;  even  with  Roberta's  shortcomings  over  fires  and  meals 
and  a  needle  and  thread,  the  first  few  weeks  of  her  life  at 
Number  Sixteen  with  Allan  were  devoid  of  dissension.  Their 
first  quarrel,  when  it  came,  was  over  something  that  was  much 
more  serious,  at  the  moment,  than  Roberta's  dislike  of  house- 
work and  her  deficiencies  as  a  housekeeper.  It  was  over  The 
Miscellany,  and  the  hopes  Allan  had  entertained  of  joining  its 
permanent  staff. 


Allan  had  dined  that  evening  with  Gore  in  town  and  had 
reached  home  at  half-past  nine  with  concrete  proposals  con- 
cerning which  he  was  inclined  to  be  enthusiastic.  Over 
Roberta's  badly-made  coffee  and  a  cigar  of  Gore's  he  began  to 
discuss  them,  but  from  them  Roberta  learned  nothing  beyond 
the  fact  that  Allan  was  proposing  to  leave  the  Comet  and  that 
his  salary  would  be  decreased  by  some  twenty  pounds  per 
annum. 

"Well,  I  like  that,"  she  said.  "How  do  you  think  I'm  going 
to  manage  on  less  than  I  do  now?  It's  hard  enough  as  it  is. 
Besides,  if  you  stop  at  the  office  you'll  be  getting  another  rise 
at  the  end  of  the  year,  and  it's  only  three  months  to  that." 

Allan,  admitting  this,  found  that  Roberta  had  her  head 
screwed  on  very  much  in  the  right  way.  She  got  to  the  heart 
of  his  financial  position  so  quickly,  in  fact,  that  he  was  taken 
unawares,  defenceless.  There  seemed  no  arguments  against 
what  she  said:  though  he  was  sure  there  should  have  been  if 


HO  INTRUSION 

he  could  only  have  thought  of  them.  The  Comet,  according 
to  Roberta,  was  a  "safe"  job,  and  "safe,"  she  gathered,  was 
about  the  last  word  to  apply  to  this  new  venture  of  Antony 
Gore's.  "Who  wants  to  read  a  dull  thing  about  books  and 
poems  and  the  people  who  write  them?"  she  asked.  "Of 
course  it  won't  pay.  And  then  where  are  you,  I'd  like  to  know? 
And  me,  too,  for  that  matter?" 

Still  the  arguments  that  Allan  was  certain  were  there  eluded 
him.  He  could  think  of  nothing  to  say  except,  a  trifle  feebly, 
that  if  the  paper  did  fail  (and  Roberta  was  wrong  in  being  so 
confident  that  it  would)  Gore  would  be  pretty  certain  to  find 
him  something  else  to  do,  and  doubtless,  too,  he  could  go  back 
to  the  Comet.  Anyway,  there  was  no  real  anxiety  on  that  score, 
if  that  was  all. 

But  it  wasn't.  Roberta  made  that  very  clear.  It  was  not 
only  a  question  of  the  difference  of  twenty  pounds  a  year: 
there  was  the  fact  that  the  Comet  now  paid  his  income-tax — 
a  thing,  Allan  agreed,  unheard  of  in  Fleet  Street.  Also  there 
were  his  bonuses.  Most  certainly  it  wasn't  only  the  loss  of 
twenty  pounds  a  year  and  safety.  There  was  a  good  deal  more 
in  it  than  that.  Allan,  Roberta  said,  must  be  mad. 

It  is  difficult  to  prove  that  you  are  not  when  there  are  so 
many  arguments  all  ready  to  give  you  the  lie.  Allan's  attempts 
went  for  nothing.  Roberta  would  not  admit  that,  once  estab- 
lished on  the  staff  of  The  Miscellany,  many  opportunities 
would  come  to  him  for  making  up  deficiencies  in  income.  She 
had  no  interest  whatever  in  Allan  as  a  writer,  and  no  belief. 
Besides,  she  had  heard  too  many  conversations  at  Adelaide 
Lodge  not  to  be  aware  that  there  was  "no  money  in  literature." 
And  "literature,"  so  she  had  come  to  understand,  was  what  all 
these  "lit'ry"  folk  she  knew  believed  themselves  to  write. 

"Can't  you  see,  Bobbie,"  Allan  said  to  her,  "that  it's  the 
work  I'm  fitted  for — that  it's  the  only  sort  of  work  I  care  about, 
that  isn't  just  drudgery?  It  means  a  tremendous  lot  to  me, 
my  accepting  this  offer." 

The  word  "drudgery"  was  unfortunate.  Roberta,  suddenly 
losing  her  temper,  repeated  it  with  scorn. 

"Drudgery,  indeed !  Do  you  imagine  you're  the  only  person 
who  drudges?  What  do  you  think  /  do  all  day?  I  suppose 
you  imagine  I  like  it — that  a  little  more  or  less  won't  make  any 
difference?  Thank  you.  If  you  wanted  a  general  servant 


INTRUSION  141 

when  you  married,  it  would  have  been  honester  to  have  said 
so!" 

And  Roberta  dashed  out  of  the  room,  banging  the  door  after 
her. 

Allan  had  an  instinct  to  follow  her,  but  instead  he  looked  at 
the  clock,  picked  up  his  book  and  sat  there  by  the  fire  making 
a  pretence  of  reading.  It  was  barely  ten;  Roberta,  he  thought, 
would  be  certain  to  come  down  again.  But  she  did  not. 
Wretched,  disappointed  and  resistant,  he  sat  on,  making  through 
his  enormous  pretence  of  reading  what  excuse  he  could  for  her. 
He  couldn't  believe  that  she  had  really  been  attempting  to  veto 
his  right  of  action;  it  was  only  that  he  had  failed  to  make  her 
understand.  Recalling  the  feeling  of  impotence  that  had  come 
over  him  as  he  had  talked  to  her,  he  realised  afresh  how  badly 
he  had  put  the  whole  thing.  He  had  had  a  sense  not  only  of 
distance  between  them,  but  of  unintelligibility,  as  though  they 
no  longer  spoke  the  same  language;  as  if  right  at  the  first  he 
had  seen  she  was  hostile  and  something  inside  him  had  hard- 
ened— crystallised  with  vague  irritation.  Even  now,  sitting 
here  before  the  fire  he  was  too  miserable  to  make  up,  the  sc«rn 
in  Roberta's  voice  drifted  back  to  him.  It  was  curiously  upsetting. 
An  unnatural  tenseness  took  him,  in  which  he  sat  on  the  edge 
of  his  chair  listening  for  sounds  of  Roberta's  movements  above. 
But  none  came.  What  was  she  doing?  Had  she  thrown  her- 
self down  to  cry,  or  merely  undressed  and  got  quietly  into  bed  ? 
He  began  to  understand  that  she  was  not  coming  down  again. 
Impatiently  he  went  back  to  his  chair  and  forced  his  mind  upon 
his  book,  and  though  at  first  his  mood  surged  up  between  him 
and  the  printed  word,  he  became  gradually  sensible  that  his 
anger  was  waning.  Its  fine  edge  was  being  worn  down  by  the 
gnawing  misery  of  his  disquiet  because,  upstairs,  Roberta  was 
so  still.  The  utter  silence  began  to  get  on  his  nerves.  He  put 
away  his  book,  fastened  doors  and  windows  and  went  upstairs. 

Roberta  was  in  bed,  and  the  moonlight  covered  her  with 
beauty.  Her  face  was  hidden  in  her  pillow,  and  her  hair 
streamed  across  it  like  a  tangled  skein  whose  red-gold  maze  the 
moon  had  threaded  with  silver.  To  Allan  it  was  as  though  the 
extraordinary  coloured  beauty  of  her  hair  had  never  revealed 
itself  before:  the  sight  of  it  stirred  him  to  gentleness,  winnow- 
ing his  anger.  He  turned  away  to  the  window,  drew  the 
curtains  across,  undressed  in  the  dark  and  got  into  bed. 


H2  INTRUSION 

Roberta  did  not  move.  He  thought  she  must  be  asleep,  but 
when  presently  he  slipped  an  arm  across  her  he  found  that  she 
was  not.  She  flung  his  arm  fiercely  away  from  her. 

"Don't  touch  me!"  she  said.  "Don't  dare  to  touch  me!" 
Something  in  her  voice,  in  the  very  vehemence  of  tone  and 
gesture,  roused  Allan's  resentment  anew.  He  turned  his  back 
on  her  and  lay  still,  fresh  anger  flooding  his  heart.  He  lay  there 
in  the  dark,  resentful,  hurt  and  estranged:  and  he  swore  that 
he'd  be  damned  before  he  "touched"  her  again.  But  sleep 
would  not  come  to  him.  When  Roberta  moved  her  hair  brushed 
across  his  face;  and  sometimes  his  foot  encountered  hers  in 
the  coolness  that  lurked  at  the  bottom  of  the  bed;  but  he  gave 
no  sign.  Rigid  and  straight,  he  lay  there  at  her  side,  staring 
at  misery.  And  midnight  came. 


The  week  that  followed  (at  the  end  of  which  he  had  prom- 
ised to  give  Antony  Gore  his  decision)  was  for  Allan  a  humili- 
ating one.  Roberta  was  difficult,  distant  and  silent.  Though 
devoid  of  scenes,  their  hours  together  yet  shuddered  with  dis- 
cord: despair  alternated  in  Allan  with  angry  resentment,  and 
both  were  like  grit  between  his  teeth.  Night  was  only  a  vast 
blankness  in  which  Roberta  withheld  herself,  shuddering  away 
from  his  touch  when  he  was  not  too  sore  and  miserable  to  offer 
it.  Once  when  he  did  she  broke  into  sobbing  that  was  like  a 
knife  in  his  heart,  and  because  he  could  not  bear  it  the  determi- 
nation seized  him  to  go  off  to  the  spare  room  and  sleep  there 
alone.  He  got  out  of  bed  and  stood  for  a  second  looking  down 
upon  her.  But  he  could  find  nothing  to  say.  He  felt  stunned 
and  chilled  and  apprehensive.  He  wanted  to  hate  her  because 
she  fought  unfairly,  but  all  the  time  there  was  only  this  sick 
longing,  this  hurt,  grievous  thing  in  his  heart  that  was  shame 
and  desire  and  bitterness.  He  bowed  his  head  and  went  out. 

But  not  to  sleep.  He  was  cold  and  restless,  and  his  brain 
pounded  away  behind  his  eyes  like  an  engine.  His  feet,  stretch- 
ing themselves  down  there  at  the  end  of  the  bed,  were  lonely, 
missing  Roberta's.  He  could  not  lie  still.  Though  he  closed 
his  eyes  and  fixed  his  mind  on  sleep,  sleep  would  not  come. 
The  night  was  warm,  and  flinging  off  the  bedclothes,  he  went 


INTRUSION  143 

and  stood  over  at  the  wide-flung  window  that  looked  down  on 
to  their  tiny  garden.  Little  was  growing  in  it  save  marguerites 
and  a  tiny  square  of  grass  they  called  the  lawn.  The  night  was 
soft  and  gleaming,  with  a  suggestion  of  rain  and  low  clouds 
that  hid  a  dwindling  moon.  Down  there  in  the  garden  nothing 
stirred  and  no  wind  came.  And  as  Allan  stood  looking  at  it 
a  feeling  of  exhaustion  flooded  him  and  a  sensation  of  failure — 
acute,  like  a  physical  pain.  He  gulped  down  the  scents  of  the 
London  night,  with  his  brain  pounding,  still  against  his  fore- 
head, hurting  him.  It  seemed  to  him  as  he  stood  there  at  the 
window  that  the  best  of  life  swung  by  at  a  stride;  that  never 
again  as  long  as  he  lived  would  he  be  able  to  catch  up  with  it. 

Presently,  when  a  clock  in  the  house  struck  one,  a  sort  of 
despair  seized  upon  him  and  a  sickening  sense  of  the  imminence 
of  the  morning  that  had  to  be  met  whether  he  was  ready  for 
it  or  not.  And  Allan  would  not  be.  He  felt  weak  and  wretched, 
and  his  head  ached  in  this  hideous  fashion  as  though  his  brain 
strove  to  push  itself  out  at  his  temples.  "If  I  could  only 
sleep!"  he  thought,  and  imagined  he  had  forgotten  Roberta 
until  he  remembered  that  somewhere  in  the  room  where  she 
lay  was  some  aspirin  that  she  kept  for  the  headaches  she  never 
had.  He  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  fetch  it.  It  was  as 
if  he  dared  not  go  into  the  room,  as  if  he  had  not  the  courage. 

But  presently  he  did  go,  opening  the  door  softly,  without 
knocking,  so  as  not  to  awaken  Roberta  if  she  slept.  But  she 
was  awake,  and  as  he  moved  round  the  room  he  had  a  sense  of 
her  stirring  .  .  .  propping  herself  on  her  elbow.  Through  the 
half-dark  he  knew  that  her  eyes  followed  him.  "I  want  some 
aspirin,"  he  said,  opening  drawers  on  the  dressing-table  and 
forgetting  to  shut  them  again.  "Do  you  know  where  it  is?" 

"In  the  little  drawer  on  the  left.     You've  woke  me  up." 

"I'm  sorry,"  Allan  said,  pulling  open  the  drawer.  He  came, 
with  the  bottle  in  his  hand,  and  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  bed. 

"They  won't  do  you  much  good  if  you  don't  take  them,  you 
know,"  said  Roberta.  Out  of  the  half-darkness  her  voice  came 
soft  and  caressing,  like  a  south  wind.  Allan  took  out  a  couple 
of  the  tablets  and  put  them  in  his  mouth.  Roberta  watched 
him. 

"You  want  some  water,"  she  said. 

"No,  I  don't,"  said  Allan.  He  gulped  the  aspirin  down  and 
put  his  head  on  Roberta's  shoulder. 


144  INTRUSION 

"That's  what  I  want,"  he  said.  "You  shouldn't  shut  me 
out." 

"Shut  you  out?    I  didn't.    You  went  of  your  own  accord." 

"But  you  did  shut  me  out.     Out  of  your  heart." 

"Oh,  that!" 

She  held  back  his  encircling  arm  and  seemed  to  sink  away 
from  him.  He  lifted  his  head  from  her  shoulder  and  looked 
at  her.  In  the  soft  darkness  of  the  room  her  hair  and  face 
gleamed  palely.  As  she  lifted  her  hands  to  push  back  her  hair 
he  saw  the  faint  outline  of  her  breasts  beneath  her  thin  night- 
dress, and  because  he  could  scarely  bear  to  look  at  her  he  rose 
and  put  away  the  aspirin.  As  he  shut  the  drawer  some  little 
part  of  him  hated  her;  but  all  the  other  was  caught  and  held 
by  the  sound  of  her  voice  and  the  glimpse  he  had  had  of  her  a 
moment  before.  One  set  of  instincts  rose  to  combat  what  he 
was  going  to  say:  another  urged  him  forward  to  the  saying  of 
it.  Yet  as  he  spoke  it  was  as  if  his  blood  leaped  back  in  his 
veins;  he  was  conscious  of  a  sinking  feeling  in  the  pit  of  his 
stomach,  and  his  voice  seemed  to  stand  out  in  the  darkness  like 
a  thing  naked  and  shamed. 

"Bobbie  ...  I  daresay  you're  right  about  A.  G.'s  offer." 

There  was  a  little  silence,  while  the  words  danced  in  letters 
of  flame  before  his  eyes  and  Roberta  seemed  to  consider. 

"I  think  I  am,  you  know,  reely,"  she  said  at  length.  "Only, 
you  please  yourself,  of  course." 

He  was  conscious  of  a  little  inward  shrinking — from  himself, 
from  her. 

"It's  a  risk,"  he  said  presently.  "Perhaps  .  .  .  now  ...  I 
ought  not  to  take  it." 

Again  she  seemed  to  consider,  and  again  she  said  at  length: 

"Well,  you  please  yourself." 

This  time  he  did  not  shrink.  He  threw  back  his  head, 
seeming  to  brace  himself  for  the  inevitable. 

"I'll  write  A.  G.  and  say  I've  decided  not  to  make  the 
plunge,"  he  said.  •  ^ 

There  was  a  little  silence.  All  about  them  was  the  dark- 
ness, shutting  them  away  from  things  like  a  drawn  curtain,  and 
beyond  it  the  night,  heavy  with  inextinguishable  desire. 

"Do  you  mean  that?"  Roberta  asked. 

"If  it  will  please  you.     Will  it,  Bobbie?" 

He  came  and  sat  on  the  bed  again,  putting  out  a  hand  and 


INTRUSION  145 

drawing  her  to  him  by  the  shoulder.  He  felt  her  head  nod 
"yes."  Her  breast,  warm  and  soft,  came  against  him.  He 
pressed  his  lips  to  her  neck  and  held  her  close. 

"Never  shut  me  out  again,"  he  said.  "Don't  keep  me 
outside.  .  .  ." 

Roberta  released  herself  and  sank  back  into  bed. 

"I'm  so  tired,"  she  said,  "and  it's  late." 

Allan  bent  down  and  covered  her  up.  His  mind  was  full  of 
the  thought  that  Roberta  had  won  and  that  she  hadn't  won 
fairly.  Dividing  this  thought  came  another.  He  began  to 
laugh. 

"Joke?"  said  Roberta. 

"I  was  only  thinking,"  Allan  told  her,  "of  something  Balzac 
said." 

"What?"  asked  Roberta,  who  recognised  Balzac  as  the  author 
of  a  singularly  dull  book  about  an  ass's  skin. 

"That  a  man  in  love  is  like  an  ape  playing  the  violin." 

Roberta  laughed.  The  simile  meant  nothing  to  her,  but  it 
added  to  her  knowledge  of  Balzac  as  a  French  writer  who 
showed  an  extraordinary  interest  in  the  nastiest  of  the 
animals.  .  .  . 

"You  ought  to  lie  down  at  once  after  that  aspirin,"  she 
admonished  Allan,  who  said,  "Yes,  I  know." 

He  was  aware,  too,  of  another  thing  that  he  knew,  which  was 
that  Roberta  would  always  win,  with  these  tactics,  while  he 
continued  to  want  her  and  was  moved — like  this — by  the  sight 
of  her.  She  glanced  up  at  him  now  as  he  hovered  there  above 
her,  and  she  smiled. 

"Hurry  up,  old  thing!"  she  said. 


CHAPTER   THREE 


AG.  took  Allan's  decision  philosophically.  He  said  that 
he  was  probably  quite  right  to  play  for  safety  and 
*  reflected  that  Allan  was  not  the  only  person  who  saw 
The  Miscellany  as  a  crazy  venture.  For  at  the  moment  A.G. 
was  in  no  position  to  give  guarantees.  The  thing  was  certainly 
a  risk;  even  Life  and  Letters  only  just  paid  its  way.  All  the 
same,  Allan's  decision  not  to  come  in  was  somehow,  he  said,  a 
tremendous  pity. 

He  said  it,  in  fact,  so  frequently  that  Guen  lost  patience 
and  scrawled  a  scrap  of  the  truth  down  upon  the  slate  she  had 
smudged  clean  two  months  ago  in  Roberta's  interest.  It  irri- 
tated her  that  A.G.  should  stand  there  like  that  talking  about 
Allan  "playing  for  safety" — Allan,  with  his  enormous  con- 
tempt for  money,  his  hatred  of  the  money  standard  by  which 
all  life  was  clipped  and  toed. 

"It  isn't  Allan's  decision  at  all,"  she  snapped,  "but 
Roberta's."  Certainly  it  was  defeat — Allan's  defeat  She  knew 
that  and  she  sat  down  to  it  as,  at  the  end,  she  had  sat  down 
to  the  fact  of  his  marriage.  She  folded  her  hands  before  it, 
as  before  a  thing  with  which,  at  the  moment,  she  could  do 
nothing;  and  she  smiled,  as  though  she  didn't  want,  either, 
to  attempt  to  do  anything  with  it.  Once  again  Roberta  had 
caught  him  on  his  vulnerable  side.  Heaven  alone  knew  how 
long  she  was  going  to  be  able  to  do  that,  how  long  there  was 
going  to  be  a  "vulnerable"  side.  One  had  to  wait,  to  fold 
one's  hands  and  keep  quiet. 

Guen  kept  quiet — even  when  her  father  wrote  her  his 
approval  of  Roberta.  For  John  Suffield  made  no  mistake.  He 
knew  whose  decision  lay  behind  that  letter  of  refusal.  Roberta 
was  an  excellent  wife:  she  was  making  Allan  "see  sense."  He 
commended  her  as  a  shrewd  person,  who  understood,  as  he 
did,  that  there  was  no  money  in  literature.  .  .  .  But  beneath 

146 


INTRUSION  147 

her  quiet  Guen  mentally  kicked  herself — and  Antony — because 
they'd  both  said  that  to  John  Suffield  too  often;  that  there 
was  no  money  in  literature.  She  saw  him  suddenly  as  the  devil 
quoting  Scripture  for  his  own — and  Roberta's — purpose. 

But  Roberta's  slate,  so  far  as  Guen  was  concerned,  was  no 
longer  clean.  What  she  had  scrawled  on  it  remained  and  was 
more  deadly  than  what  had  been  erased.  It  was  a  conjecture 
Guen  had  rubbed  out,  a  certainty  she  had  now  written  in. 


As  for  Allan  himself.  .  .  . 

In  the  days  that  immediately  followed,  though  he  saw  well 
enough  how  thorough  Roberta's  victory  was,  he  did  not  see, 
in  the  very  least,  how  very  thorough,  too,  was  his  defeat; 
nor  that  it  was  a  defeat  as  much  mental  and  moral  as  it  was 
physical — indicative  of  his  whole  relationship  with  Roberta 
and  hers  with  him.  Herself  destitute  of  passion,  Roberta  had 
yet  learned  how  to  use  Allan's,  how  to  make  it  serve  her  own 
ends.  She  saw  it  suddenly  as  a  key  that  fitted  a  good  many 
locks — all  the  locks  Roberta  cared  so  far  to  manipulate. 

Looking  back,  it  seemed  to  Allan  that  the  night  when  he 
had  definitely  turned  his  back  upon  the  door  Antony  Gore 
had  held  open  for  him,  was  the  beginning  of  a  period  of 
happiness  that  never  came  again.  And  though  it  was  brief 
Allan  got,  later,  into  the  habit  of  being  grateful  for  it.  He 
used  to  clench  the  teeth  of  his  mind  upon  the  thought  of  it. 
He  had  had  it.  No  one  could  take  it  away  from  him. 

Afterwards  it  wasn't  easy  to  remember  the  things  that  went 
to  the  making  of  it.  Very  little  reading,  certainly,  and  less 
writing,  because,  somehow,  he  cared  less  for  writing  as  a  hobby 
now  that  he  had  abandoned  it  as  a  career.  The  definite  things 
about  it  were  Martyn's  return  from  Shanklin,  his  visits  to 
Meldon  Avenue  and  two  trips  of  Roberta's  to  Bromley,  there 
to  take  afternoon  tea,  for  all  of  which  things  Allan  was  grate- 
ful, because  he  imagined — quite  wrongly — that  Roberta  must 
be  having  a  dull  time,  since  Caryl  had  distinguished  herself 
by  spraining  her  ankle  during  the  week-end  at  Workingham 
which  was  to  have  wound  up  her  holiday,  and  without  Caryl 
Roberta  did  not  show  over-much  anxiety  to  present  herself 
at  Adelaide  Lodge.  Miss  Carew,  Allan  was  aware,  was  still 


H8  INTRUSION 

in  Paris.  He  had  not  met  Tommy,  and,  despite  Roberta's 
mother,  was  endeavouring  to  keep  an  open  mind  about  the  lady, 
whom  Roberta  said  she  "missed."  These  things,  he  thought, 
must  leave  Roberta  very  much  alone. 

They  did,  of  course,  but  to  nothing  like  the  extent  that  Allan 
imagined,  who  was  not  aware  of  the  afternoons  she  spent  with 
Martyn  at  some  place  he  knew  where  tea  was  made  an  excuse 
for  dancing.  Roberta  loved  dancing  and  so  did  Martyn:  but 
it  was  Roberta  who  suggested  that  these  afternoons  should  be 
conducted  sub  rosa. 

"Good  lord,  why?"  Martyn  asked.  "Why  shouldn't  he 
know?  There's  nothing  in  it.  Allan's  not  that  sort  of  ass." 

"All  right,"  said  Roberta,  "but  let  us  know  where  we  are. 
What  about  your  people?  How  do  you  explain  your  absence 
from  the  office?" 

Martyn  flushed. 

"That's  rather  different,  isn't  it?"  he  asked. 

"How?"  queried  an  innocent-eyed  Roberta. 

"I  mean  .  .  .  you  see.  .  .  .  Oh,  hang  it  all,  my  dear  girl, 
I'm  supposed  to  be  at  work.  Until  I  definitely  chuck  it  I've 
got  to  let  the  guvnor  down  lightly.  He'd  kick  up  an  awful 
dust  if  he  thought  I  took  days  off  like  this.  He'd  think  the 
business  was  going  to  the  dogs,  whereas  the  truth  is  that  it's 
much  more  likely  to  do  that  if  I  don't  take  days  off." 

"I  see,"  said  Roberta,  "then  we'd  better  make  this  our  last 
day.  We  can't  play  half-and-half  like  this." 

So  in  the  end  it  was  sub  rosa  for  Allan  as  well — just  as 
Roberta  had  meant  it  should  be.  Allan  was  so  old-fashioned. 

Martyn,  despite  an  occasional  inward  twinge,  did  certainly 
find  these  afternoons  with  Roberta  a  welcome  relief  to  the 
uncongenial  business  of  being  a  junior  partner  in  the  concern 
which  bore  the  family  name  and  which  took  him  daily — or 
should  have  taken  him — to  that  dull  maze  of  streets  and 
traffic  which  Londoners  call  the  Borough.  Commerce  attracted 
Martyn  no  more  than  it  attracted  Allan,  and  all  his  ambition 
lay  in  quite  another  direction.  He  had  wanted  all  his  life  to 
go  prospecting,  or  to  join  some  Expedition  bound  for  the 
Unknown,  and  his  sojournings  in  Mesopotamia  had  done  noth- 
ing to  reconcile  him  to  this  life  of  the  desk.  Some  day  when 
it  meant  less  to  his  father  he  meant  to  break  away.  Roberta 
laughed  when  he  said  this  sort  of  thing  to  her:  she  couldn't 


INTRUSION  149 

see,  she  said,  what  he  had  to  grumble  at.  To  Roberta  his 
prospects  were  rosy  enough,  for  the  fortunes  of  the  Thorps 
were  founded  upon  a  substratum  of  custard  powder.  It  was 
Martyn's  grandfather  who  had  discovered  the  quite  supereroga- 
tory nature  of  the  hen,  and  had  proceeded  to  put  the  creature 
in  her  place  by  the  building  of  a  custard  factory  and  the 
establishment  of  Thorp's  Custard  Powder  Co.,  Ltd.,  which 
had  paid  a  large  dividend  at  the  end  of  its  first  year's  working 
and  placarded  England  with  pictures  of  rosy  children  who 
hugged  large  bowls  of  custard  and  made  rude  remarks  to 
interested-looking  hens.  To  Martyn,  who  preferred  real  eggs 
in  his  custard,  who  loved  dancing,  appreciated  pretty  girls  and 
was  not  at  all  inflammable,  some  such  outlet  as  this  which  now 
offered  was  not  only  necessary  but  inevitable,  although  he 
had  no  hope  whatever  of  getting  his  father  to  acknowledge  it. 
Seen  in  prospective  these  afternoons  had  made  custard  just 
remotely  possible;  even  when  he  was  engaged  in  covering  his 
tracks  they  went  on  being  attractive  for  some  time — until,  in 
fact,  he  was  discovered.  There  was  a  certain  woman  who  had 
met  Roberta  in  Mrs.  Thorp's  drawing-room  at  Bromley,  who 
knew  Martyn  very  well  by  sight  and  who  had  a  daughter.  The 
daughter,  like  Martyn  and  Roberta,  was  a  dancing  enthusiast; 
her  mother  was  not,  but  she  had  old-fashioned  ideas  about 
the  newfangled  dances  and  insisted  upon  coming  to  eat  the 
tea  for  which  her  daughter's  men-friends  paid  and  never  had 
time.  "Making  a  damned  nuisance  of  herself"  the  men- 
friends  called  it — an  extensive  role  which  reached  out  to 
embrace  Martyn  and  Roberta.  Really,  two  afternoons  in  one 
week.  ...  It  was  her  duty  to  speak.  She  spoke. 

What  followed  was  altogether  too  painful,  and  from  it 
Martyn  emerged  crumpled  and  soiled  in  his  self-esteem  and — i 
incredibly  surprised.  Not  because  he  had  been  found  out: 
sooner  or  later,  and  as  far  as  his  father  was  concerned,  he  had 
expected  that;  but  because  something  had  happened  which 
in  no  way  at  all  had  he  expected,  either  late  or  soon.  It  wasn't 
only  that  his  father  had  made  a  fuss,  that  his  mother  had  said 
harsh  things  of  Roberta.  He  would  have  got  over  all  that. 
What  he  could  not  get  over  were  the  things  within  himself 
which  had  arisen  suddenly  and  confronted  him.  He  saw  them 
first  when,  done  with  custard  for  ever,  he  had  stalked  out  of 
the  house  to  send  a  cablegram  accepting  some  wild-cat  opening 


150  INTRUSION 

(his  father's  term  for  it)  which  had  offered  itself  a  week  ago 
and  which  he  had  never  seriously  contemplated  accepting.  With 
the  message  written  and  staring  up  at  him  he  had  seen  in  one 
moment  of  devastating  vision  what  its  dispatch  would  mean. 
Not  only  the  end  of  custard,  but  the  end,  for  him,  of  Roberta. 
The  realisation  ought  not  to  have  hurt:  he  ought  to  have  minded 
scarcely  at  all,  but  he  did.  He  minded  horribly.  It  was  that 
which  surprised  him,  for  it  was  not  in  the  bond.  There 
Roberta  had  been  written  down  plainly  as  Recreation;  Some- 
thing Nice  to  Look  At.  She  had  no  right  to  appear  suddenly, 
as  she  did,  as  a  Complication. 

Truth  to  tell,  Martyn  was  not  used  to  complications  of  this 
sort,  and  tearing  up  his  message  he  went  home  to  work  this 
one  out.  It  was  not,  he  found,  very  easy,  though  he  did  not 
come  to  this  adventure  of  love  as  Allan  had  come  to  it.  Roberta 
was  by  no  means  the  only  girl  Martyn  had  looked  at,  though 
he  had  looked  at  her  to  some  purpose,  seeing  from  the  first 
a  good  deal  more  of  the  real  Roberta  than  Allan  ever  had  and 
probably  ever  would.  And,  too,  there  was  Allan  himself.  .  .  . 

The  thing  was  inexplicable.  .  .  .  Nothing  like  it  had  ever 
happened  to  Martyn  before.  He  had  fallen  in  love  and  he  had 
fallen  out  again,  and  he  had  always  known  that  these  things 
were  about  to  happen.  But  falling  in  love  with  another  man's 
wife  was  against  Martyn's  code.  Freedom  on  both  sides  had 
belonged  to  all  Martyn's  love-affairs,  that  had  gone,  as  yet,  so 
little  deeply.  One  was  attracted;  one  was  attracted  no  longer. 
The  flame  burned  up  and  burned  down,  and  no  one  was  any 
the  worse.  Candles  in  the  wind,  all  of  us,  with  our  little  lives, 
our  little  loves.  ...  So  Martyn  reasoned,  who  did  not  look 
for  permanence  in  human  emotions  and  was  not  attracted  to 
marriage  which  so  obviously  does.  In  love  he  was  an  experi- 
mentalist, with  the  right  of  choice  in  his  own  hands.  That, 
in  this  instance,  was  the  devil  of  it.  He  had  not  chosen  to 
fall  in  love  with  Roberta.  She  was  Allan's  wife,  for  one  thing, 
and  for  another,  he  had  never  imagined  there  was  enough  of 
her  to  fall  in  love  with.  Yet  somehow  he  had  done  it.  He 
knew,  of  course,  that  it  wouldn't  last.  It  wasn't  Roberta  who 
would  inspire  a  lifelong  passion — if  such  a  thing  were  possible 
• — in  any  man.  Why,  on  a  really  clear  day,  you  could  see  right 
through  her.  .  .  .  She  was  empty,  a  mere  beautiful  shell.  .  .  . 
No  affair  that  he  or  any  other  man  had  with  her  would  last. 


INTRUSION  i  si 

It  couldn't.  It  was  like  being  in  love  with  a  shadow.  Prop- 
erly, of  course,  she  simply  didn't  exist.  When  he  found  that 
out  God  help  the  man  who  had  married  her. 

Yet  but  for  Allan — the  man  who  had — Martyn  was  well 
enough  aware  that  he  would  have  drifted  into  an  "affair"  with 
Roberta — at  least  as  far  as  Roberta  would  have  allowed  him, 
which  was  probably  a  good  deal  less  far  than  he  imagined. 
Anyway,  it  would  have  been  very  pleasant  while  it  lasted. 
Martyn,  looking  his  proposition  straight  in  the  eye,  worked  out 
the  answer  at  six  months.  He'd  be  very  tired  in  six  months, 
he  thought;  six  months  would  certainly  exhaust  Roberta — and 
her  attraction  for  him. 

Martyn,  making  these  precise  calculations,  never  doubted 
their  accuracy  nor  what  they  implied.  Six  months  wasn't  good 
enough.  He  wasn't  going  to  play  the  cad  for  stakes  as  short 
as  that.  And  Roberta  wasn't  worth  it.  He  saw  far  enough 
to  see  that.  So  he  went  out  the  next  morning  and  sent  his 
cablegram;  and  hi  the  afternoon  he  went  down  to  Meldon 
Avenue  to  see  Roberta. 

Roberta  was  delighted  to  see  him  and  gave  him  tea,  which 
he  allowed  to  get  cold  while  he  crumbled  his  bread-and-butter 
in  his  saucer  and  either  talked  at  random  or  didn't  talk  at  all. 
Neither,  so  far,  had  he  complimented  Roberta  on  her  appear- 
ance, which  was  probably  why  she  asked  him  presently  what 
was  wrong. 

"You  do  seem  funny,"  she  said. 

"Funny,"  he  thought,  expressed  it.  He  would  never  have 
believed  that  he  could  feel  like  this  about  a  thing  which  he  had 
reasoned  out  so  carefully.  A  profound  gratitude  seized  upon 
him  that  he  had  sent  the  cablegram  that  morning.  This 
afternoon  would  have  been  too  late. 

"What's  up?"  Roberta  repeated. 

"Nothing  much,"  he  said,  putting  down  his  cup  and  saucer 
and  suddenly  horribly  aware  of  the  hideous  mess  he  had  made 
of  it,  "only — I've  a  surprise  for  you.  I'm  off  on  Friday  to 
the  Rockies." 


With  a  ridiculous  assumption  of  sang-froid  he  came  and  stood 
with  his  back  to  the  fire-place.    A  score  of  emotions  were  tear- 


152  INTRUSION 

ing  at  him,  yet  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  as  he  lit  his 
cigarette  but  a  desire  to  tell  Roberta  not  to  stare  at  him  so. 
Frankly,  she  was  incapable,  just  then,  of  doing  anything  else: 
he  had  taken  her  so  completely  unawares  that  she  had  not  had 
tune  to  adopt  her  air  of  histrionics.  It  was  the  natural  Roberta 
who  stared  and  who  said,  "The  Rockies?"  in  a  thin,  astonished 
interrogative,  as  though  she  had  never  heard  of  them  before. 

"Yes,  they're  mountains  in  North  America.  Perhaps  geog- 
raphy wasn't  your  strong  point  at  school!" 

Roberta  began  to  recover. 

"Is  it  a  joke?"  she  enquired. 

"Far  from  it,  I  imagine,"  Martyn  told  her. 

"But  it's  absurd,"  Roberta  insisted.  "You  can't  possibly 
mean  that  you're  leaving  England  on  Friday — why,  that's  the 
day  after  to-morrow." 

"That's  it,"  said  Martyn.  The  cigarette,  he  found,  was 
helpful. 

"But  it's  absurd,"  said  Roberta  again. 

"It  is,  rather,"  Martyn  agreed.  "But  most  things  are,  you 
know,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it.  Only  this  one's  true — 
which  most  things  aren't.  I'm  off  on  Friday." 

"But,  Martyn,  why?" 

"Fed  up." 

"With  me?" 

"Oh,  rot!     Of  course  not  with  you — with  things  generally." 

"Which  includes  me.  You  don't  want  to  come  out  with  me 
any  more.  Is  that  it?" 

"You  know  it  isn't." 

"But  you  don't — any  longer — care  so  much  about  it?" 

"You  know  I'd  rather  come  out  with  you  than  with  any- 
body." 

Roberta  smiled. 

"Well,  then?"  she  said. 

Martyn  said  nothing.  He  was  only  overwhelmingly  grateful 
that  he'd  had  the  sense  to  send  off  that  cablegram  before  he 
came. 

"Martyn,  don't  be  silly.  We  aren't  doing  any  harm,  and  it 
isn't  as  though  I'd  go  out  with  you  if  Allan  were  free.  I 
wouldn't,  of  course.  It  wouldn't  be  right." 

Martyn  winced. 

"Of  course  not,"  he  said. 


INTRUSION  153 

"Well,  then,"  said  Roberta  again.     "Be  nice  again,  Martyn." 

"I  can't,"  he  said.  "At  least,  I  won't.  That's  done,  finished 
with." 

"I  see,"  said  Roberta.     "Someone's  found  us  out  and  told." 

He  explained. 

"There  was  a  row,"  he  said,  "and  I'm  clearing  out." 

"Just  because  of  that?     How  absolutely  silly,  Martyn." 

"It  isn't  just  because  of  that.     It's  only  hurried  things  up." 

"I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  you  mean,"  Roberta  told  him. 

"Haven't  you?" 

"Well,  how  should  I?" 

"You  mean  to  say  it's  never  occurred  to  you  that  I'm  getting 
rather  too  fond  of  you?" 

"My  dear  Martyn,  why  should  it?" 

"Because  it  happens  to  be  true." 

"Don't  be  silly,"  said  Roberta.  "Why  do  you  want  to  go 
and  spoil  things?" 

"That's  what  I'm  trying  not  to  do.  That's  why  I'm  going. 
You  see.  ...  I  like  Allan  too  well  to  spoil  things  for  him.  .  .  ." 

"But  you  don't  mind  spoiling  them  for  me?" 

"I  shan't  do  that  .  .  .  much." 

Roberta  got  up  from  her  chair  and  came  over  to  stand  in 
front  of  him.  She  was  herself  again,  and  mistress  of  the 
situation. 

"How  do  you  know?"  she  said. 

"I  just  do  ...  that's  all.  It  isn't  you  that's  in  danger  of 
losing  your  head.  I  can't  imagine  you'd  ever  do  that." 

She  smiled  her  appreciation  of  that  as  she  put  out  a  hand 
and  caught  at  a  button  of  his  coat. 

"Martyn,  do  shut  up  talking  rot  and  be  nice." 

"I'm  not  talking  rot." 

"Aren't  you?" 

He  looked  down  at  her  twisting  the  button  of  his  coat. 

"Don't  do  that,"  he  said. 

She  went  on  doing  it. 

"I  do  think  men  are  silly,"  she  remarked. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "but  I'm  going  to  be  less  silly  than  I 
might  quite  possibly  be  if  circumstances  were  different.  You 
see  .  .  .  you're  married  to  Allan.  Nothing  can  alter  that." 

"Well  .  .  .  who  wants  to  alter  it?     Allan's  all  right," 

"I  know.     Allan's  so  very  much  'all  right'  that  I  can't  go 


154  INTRUSION 

on.  You  may  as  well  have  the  truth.  I'm  not  a  plaster  saint. 
I'd  go  on,  right  enough,  if  it  weren't  for  Allan.  .  .  .  D'you 
know,  it's  very  difficult  to  explain  with  you  twiddling  about 
like  that  with  my  coat.  ..." 

"This,"  said  Roberta,  still  fiddling  with  the  button,  "is  most 
frightfully  interesting." 

"I  thought  you'd  find  it  so." 

"Don't  be  beastly,"  said  Roberta,  "and  go  on  with  the 
explanation." 

"There  isn't  much  more  of  it.  Besides,  explanations  never 
explain  .  .  .  but  I  think  that  what  I  mean  is  that  I'd  lose  my 
head  .  .  .  over  you  .  .  .  fairly  comfortably  and  be  damned 
to  it  if  it  weren't  for  Allan.  But  as  it  is  I  shall  probably  hate 
you  pretty  badly  later  on  for  having  knocked  our  friendship — 
mine  and  Allan's — on  the  head." 

Roberta  smiled. 

"Really,  you  know,"  she  said,  "you're  being  awfully  funny 
this  afternoon." 

"I'm  glad  I'm  amusing." 

"But  you're  rather  silly,  too.  I  can't  think  what  you're 
making  all  this  fuss  about.  Why,  you've  never  once  even 
attempted  to  kiss  me." 

"No,  there  isn't  even  that  between  us.  Well,  you  can  score 
it  to  my  credit." 

"I  think  you're  perfectly  horrid." 

"Don't  think  that  .  .  .  and,  I  say,  do  stop  twiddling  that 
button.  You're  making  it  very  difficult  for  me.  .  .  ." 

"Not  to  go?" 

"Not  to  kiss  you." 

"Oh,  that!" 

Roberta  shrugged  her  shoulders,  stopped  twiddling  the  button 
and  moved  a  step  away  from  him.  But  Martyn  caught  her 
by  the  shoulder  and  pulled  her  up  sharply  against  him. 

"Do  you  care  a  tuppenny  damn  about  me,  anyhow?"  he 
demanded. 

"Of  course.  ...  I  like  you  very  much.  .  .  ." 

"I  see.  You  like  me  very  much.  And  it  rather  amuses 
you,  doesn't  it,  to  see  me  making  a  fool  of  myself  over  you?" 

"Don't  be  silly,"  said  Roberta.     "And  please  let  me  go." 

"It's  all  right.  Don't  be  afraid.  I'm  not  going  to  kiss 
you." 


INTRUSION  155 

She  went  limp  suddenly  in  his  arms. 

"Martyn  .  .  .  don't  go,"  she  said. 

His  mouth  was  very  near  hers. 

"Please  .  .  .  because  I  ask  you,"  she  said. 

She  could  feel  his  arms  round  her  like  a  grip  of  steel.  Her 
breast,  beneath  her  thin  frock,  was  crushed  painfully  against 
his.  His  breath  came  hot  on  her  face.  She  shut  her  eyes  and 
was  still.  If  he  kissed  her  he  would  stay.  She  knew  that.  .  .  . 

But  he  didn't  kiss  her.  There  at  the  end  something  got  in 
his  way,  came  down  likp  a  shutter  before  her  passionless  eyes 
and  cool  red  pouting  mouth.  It  was  as  if  her  innate  frigidity 
took  shape  and  stood,  forbidding,  before  the  fire  of  his  own 
passion,  treading  it  out  He  let  go  his  hold  of  her  and  stepped 
back.  He  never  remembered  what  he  said,  there  at  the  last. 
Neither  did  Roberta.  She  only  remembered  that  he  collected 
his  hat  and  stick,  shook  her  by  the  hand  and  departed. 

It  was  an  anti-climax  and  Roberta,  being  chagrined,  wanted 
to  cry.  But  she  thought  better  of  it  and  sat  down  to  ponder 
the  situation.  Men,  of  course,  were  idiots,  fools,  for  ever 
spoiling  things,  making  them  beastly.  The  nicest  men,  so  she 
reflected,  were  like  that:  even  Jan  Suffield,  who  had  been 
quite  the  nicest  man  she  had  known.  They  had  no  morals — 
except  Allan,  who  was  an  idealist  and  had  too  many  and  didn't 
approve  of  anybody  else's.  Friendship — as  Roberta  under- 
stood and  practised  it,  a  queer  thing,  stretched  to  the  inclusion 
of  kisses  that  were  mutual  and  presents  that  were  not — had 
never  been  sufficient  for  the  men  Roberta  had  known.  Event- 
ually you  came  always  to  their  impudent  assumption  that  you, 
too,  had  no  morals.  When  you  asserted  them  they  called  you 
"puritanic"  and  "old-fashioned,"  and  left  you  for  someone 
who  wasn't,  as  Jan  had  left  her  for  that  woman  at  Fulham 
and  goodness  knew  how  many  others.  Martyn  was  the  first 
of  her  acquaintances  who  had  left  her  not  for  her  scruples 
but  for  his  own,  and  thus  far  he  had  a  certain  claim  to  her 
regard:  but  he,  too,  had  "spoilt"  things,  which  was  tiresome 
because  life  looked  now  as  though  it  might  for  a  while  be 
dull.  Roberta  had  found  Martyn  excellent  company,  and 
was  annoyed  that  fate,  or  whatever  it  was  that  controlled 
events,  didn't  manage  better.  Chronologically  fate  was  all 
at  sea:  things  never  happened  in  the  right  order.  This  did 
not  mean  that  Roberta  was  "in  love"  (or  any  rubbish  of  that 


156  INTRUSION 

sort)  with  Martyn  Thorp,  but  only  that  there  would  have  been 
distinct  advantages  in  having  married  Martyn  rather  than 
Allan,  if  only  fate  had  been  sensible  enough  to  have  reversed 
the  order  of  their  meeting.  And  now  that  she  would  not  see 
him  again  she  was  inclined  to  be  sorrowful  over  the  manner  of 
his  departure.  He  ought  not  to  have  gone  so  calmly,  carrying 
his  stick  and  gloves  and  wishing  her  good-bye  as  though  they 
would  meet  again  on  the  morrow.  Looked  at  romantically  it 
was  all  wrong.  Most  of  life  was.  .  .  . 

She  cheered  up  considerably  when  the  five  o'clock  post 
brought  her  a  letter  from  Tommy  Carew  in  Paris,  for  Tommy 
wanted  to  know  if  Roberta  remembered  a  Mr.  Rayne — a  Mr. 
Douglas  or  "Duggie"  Rayne — and  hinted  that  at  least  Mr. 
Rayne  remembered  Roberta.  Tommy  seemed  to  have  run  up 
against  him  in  Paris  and  they  were  returning  together  at  the 
end  of  the  week.  When,  wrote  Miss  Carew,  "we  must  all 
foregather." 

So,  as  she  had  shrugged  others,  Roberta  now  shrugged 
Martyn — not  merely  out  of  England,  but  off  the  map  altogther. 
She  had  "done"  with  Martyn. 


But  Allan  hadn't. 

That  same  evening  after  the  badly-cooked  meal  which,  with 
a  robust  optimism,  they  both  called  "dinner,"  he  wondered 
suddenly  what  had  become  of  him.  "Perhaps  he'll  look  us 
up  this  week,"  he  remarked. 

Roberta,  lighting  her  cigarette,  became  suddenly  absorbed 
in  the  occupation. 

"No,"  she  said,  "he  won't." 

"How  do  you  know?"  Allan  asked. 

"He  isn't  coming  here  any  more  at  all." 

Allan  stared  at  her. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "why  not?" 

"Because  he's  accepted  that  job  in  the  Rockies." 

Allan  continued  to  stare  at  her. 

"I  thought,"  he  said,  "that  he'd  given  up  all  idea  of  that?" 

"Well,  anyhow,  he  sails  on  Friday,"  said  Roberta,  and  tossed 
her  burnt-out  match  into  the  fire.  "That's  all  I  know  about 
it.  I  suppose  he  knows  his  own  business  best." 


INTRUSION  157 

"Friday !     But  that's  the  day  after  to-morrow." 

"I  know.  Well,  there  it  is.  He's  going  right  enough.  He 
came  down  this  afternoon  to  tell  me." 

"Look  here,"  said  Allan,  "what's  up?  This  is  all  con- 
foundedly mysterious.  Why  should  he  go  off  suddenly  like 
that,  without  saying  a  word  to  anybody  about  it?  He  can't 
mean  to  go  off  without  even  saying  good-bye.  What's  up 
exactly?" 

"Well,"  said  Roberta,  "I  suppose  I  ought  to  tell  you, 
though  it  isn't  very  nice  for  me,  reely.  You  mustn't  mind, 
Allan.  Of  course  it's  all  very  silly.  .  .  .  The  fact  is  Martyn's 
clearing  off  to  the  Rockies,  so  he  says  .  .  .  because  of  me." 

Allan's  face  was  a  blank. 

"Because  of  you?     What  on  earth  do  you  mean?" 

"I  think,"  said  Roberta,  "that  you  might  make  an  effort  to 
be  intelligent." 

"But  upon  my  word,"  Allan  began,  "I  really  don't  see.  .  .  ." 

Then  suddenly  he  did. 

"You  mean  Martyn's  in  love  with  you?  Good  lord,  what 
rot  I" 

"You're  not  very  complimentary,"  Roberta  said. 

"Complimentary  be  damned,"  said  Allan.  "Do  you  mean 
to  tell  me  that  Martyn  came  here  for  the  purpose  of  telling 
you  he'd  fallen  in  love  with  you?" 

"No,  of  course  I  don't.  He  came  to  tell  me  he  was  leaving 
England  and  to  say  good-bye.  The  other  just  .  .  .  happened." 

"Well,  I'm  .  .  .  jiggered,"  said  Allan. 

His  face  became  very  red,  then  paled  again.  His  voice  when 
he  spoke  was  quiet. 

"What  else — 'just  happened?'"  he  asked. 

"Nothing,"  said  Roberta.     "Why  should  it?" 

Allan  made  no  attempt  to  answer  that. 

"He's  never  .  .  .  kissed  you?"  he  asked. 

"Of  course  not." 

"Not  even  this  afternoon?" 

"Don't  be  absurd." 

"I'm  not,"  Allan  told  her.  "I  want  to  know,  that's  all. 
Did  Martyn  kiss  you  this  afternoon?  Yes  or  no?  I  shan't  go 
out  and  shoot  him.  I  only  want  to  know.  Yes  or  no,  now?" 

"Well,"   said  Roberta,   "if  you  reely  must  know,   he  did 


158  INTRUSION 

try  .  .  .  but  of  course  I  wouldn't  let  him.  It  wouldn't  have 
been  right." 

Allan  looked  at  her.  "I  see,"  he  said.  "Thank  you  for 
telling  me." 

The  next  day  Allan  tried  to  ring  Martyn  up,  but  without 
success,  and  at  luncheon  time  wired  him  at  the  office  and  at 
Bromley  "Can  you  dine  with  me  to-night?"  And  Martyn 
couldn't.  His  answer  came  a  couple  of  hours  later. 

"Extremely  sorry,  rushed  off  my  feet.     Regret  unable  wish 
you  good-bye." 

That  was  the  end.  They  never  met  again.  In  the  spring 
of  the  following  year  Martyn  was  killed  on  some  hunting 
expedition  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Red  River  Settlement. 
It  was  Roberta  who  saw  the  account  of  it  in  some  newspaper 
and  was  suitably  thrilled.  It  is  possible  the  thrill  might  have 
gone  deeper  and  lasted  longer  if  she  had  known  that  a  bitter- 
tongued  woman  in  a  Bromley  drawing-room  ascribed  her  son's 
death,  not  to  the  wild  animals  of  North  America,  not  even, 
as  did  his  father,  to  the  bad  shooting  of  his  companions,  but 
just  to  "that  girl  he  met  at  Shanklin."  Behind  the  wild 
animals  and  the  mishandled  gun  she  saw  everlastingly  Roberta, 
but  for  whom  she  believed  Martyn  would  never  have  encount- 
ered either.  Martyn's  mother,  like  the  girl  she  hated,  was 
a  sentimentalist:  neither  of  them  would  have  been  grateful 
if  you  had  told  them  that  Martyn  had  forgotten  Roberta 
before  he  reached  the  end  of  his  voyage  out.  But  it  would 
have  been  true. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 


LATER,  whenever  Allan  looked  back  upon  this  period 
of  his  life  with  Roberta  it  was  always  the  ruins  of  his 
friendship  with  Martyn  Thorp  that  seemed  to  top  it. 
Yet  at  the  time  of  the  crash  they  had  certainly  done  nothing 
of  the  sort.  Martyn 's  confession  to  Roberta  (and  her  version 
of  it  to  Allan)  had  acted  upon  her  as  a  tonic,  so  that  she  had 
thrilled  once  again  to  a  sense  of  her  own  importance.  Like 
a  tree  in  spring  she  fairly  budded  with  sweetness,  as  though 
she  strove  still  to  make  up  to  Allan  for  the  thing  he  had  given 
up.  Yet  it  was  impossible  not  to  see  that  she  hated  and 
mistrusted  this  need  of  his  to  write.  For  all,  these  days,  he 
did  so  little  of  it,  the  sight  of  him  sitting  there  so  quietly 
with  paper  and  pencil  had  sometimes  an  extraordinary  effect 
upon  Roberta  and  her  budding  sweetness.  Every  line  he 
wrote  was  nothing  to  her  but  a  form  of  masculine  selfishness, 
a  thing  which  rendered  him  distrait  and  irritable  and  left  her 
to  do  a  good  many  dull  things  in  the  kitchen  which,  but  for 
this  writing  mood,  he  would  have  shared  with  her.  For  Allan 
hated  to  see  her  doing  things  for  him;  could  not  bear  to  think 
of  her  growing  tired  in  his  service  and  spoiling  her  hands. 
That  was  how  he  put  it.  Actually,  of  course,  it  would  have 
taken  a  good  deal  more  housework  than  Roberta  did  to  break 
down  the  barrier  of  her  vitality  and  make  her  tired.  Neither 
were  her  hands  in  any  danger  of  being  spoiled,  because  she 
spent  a  good  deal  in  their  interest  at  the  local  chemists  and 
left  all  the  really  injurious  tasks  to  Mrs.  Noakes,  whose  hands 
didn't  matter  and  who  had  no  money  to  spend  on  them  at  the 
chemist's,  anyway. 

If  he  thought  about  it  at  all,  Allan  doubtless  believed  him- 
self to  be  happy.  Certainly  he  was  absorbed  in  this  self- 
appointed  task  of  "moulding"  Roberta.  He  believed  it  could 
be  done — that  it  was  in  a  sense  his  job  in  life;  his  job  to 

159 


i6o  INTRUSION 

make  the  Roberta  that  was  into  the  Roberta  of  his  dreams, 
into  the  Roberta  that  he  saw  every  time  he  kissed  her.  Guen, 
spending  a  week-end  with  them  at  Meldon  Avenue,  found  the 
spectacle  of  Allan's  efforts  in  this  direction  rather  more  than 
she  could  stand.  For  it  wasn't  true:  you  couldn't  mould 
Roberta.  But  it  was  true  that  she  had  brains — of  a  sort;  she 
was  clever  enough  to  let  you  think  you  were  moulding  her, 
since  things,  that  way,  were  easier.  During  the  two  days  of 
her  visit  Guen  raged  inwardly  against  her  brother's  persistent 
endeavour  to  save  Roberta  trouble:  was  rendered  speechless 
with  anger  at  seeing  him  frittering  his  time  away  over  helping 
her  to  wash  up.  Damn  it  all,  why  shouldn't  Roberta  wash 
up?  It  was  her  part  of  the  bargain,  and  it  wasn't  as  though 
she  was  ill  or  wanted  to  do  other  things.  She  didn't.  She 
didn't  want  to  do  anything  at  all  except  be  amused  or  enter- 
tained, or  sing  the  wrong  songs  in  a  sweet  untrained  voice  at 
you.  But  while  Allan  washed  up  Guen  remembered  that  his 
Life  and  Letters  "copy"  was  always  late,  and  understood  why 
and  let  it  get  on  her  nerves.  She  went  home  and  swore  mildly 
about  it  to  A.G.,  who  said  he  thought  it  very  nice  of  Allan 
to  help  his  wife  wash  up,  and  that  it  wasn't  Roberta's  fault 
his  "copy"  came  late.  There  were  people  who  were  always 
late  with  their  "copy."  "Allan,  he  supposed,  was  one  of 
them.  .  .  . 

So  Allan  went  on  being  late  with  it  and  saving  Roberta 
trouble.  At  least  two  evenings  a  week  he  took  her  out  to 
dinner  and  sometimes  to  a  theatre  or  cinema  afterwards, 
though  not  too  often,  because  Roberta  didn't  care  for  galleries 
and  pits  (which  were  all  Allan  could  afford)  and  Allan  didn't 
care  for  the  cinema.  He  spent,  of  course,  a  good  deal  more 
money  than  he  should  have  done,  but  it  pleased  him  to  please 
Roberta  and  preserved  to  him  this  ecstasy  that  was  his  feeling 
for  her  and  his  joy  and  pride  in  her  beauty,  which  marriage 
in  a  quite  definite  way  had  deepened  and  enriched.  Every- 
thing about  her  had  been,  as  it  were,  toned-up,  reinforced; 
her  exquisite  colouring,  her  hair  and  eyes,  her  very  health  and 
vitality.  To  it  all  something — something  without  a  name  but 
very  definite  for  all  that — had  been  added.  Even  Guen  admit- 
ted that,  always  acknowledging  Roberta's  beauty  without  ever 
being  in  chains  to  it  as  was  Allan  or  Caryl.  She  saw  it  as 
the  one  thing  she  possessed;  her  one  claim  to  your — toleration. 


INTRUSION  161 

But  it  was  Caryl,  meeting  her  for  the  first  time  since  her 
marriage,  who  said  that  Roberta  was  a  supremely  excellent 
advertisement  for  matrimony. 


Caryl  had  made  the  occasion  of  her  birthday  and  her 
approaching  exam,  the  excuse  for  ignoring  the  medical  opinion 
that  she  ought  not  to  think  of  getting  home  for  another  week. 
She  wrote  to  her  mother  that  she  must  come  and  fetch  her — 
in  something,  anything,  that  went  on  wheels.  And  when  her 
mother  arrived  with  a  private  car  which  looked  as  though  it 
might  prove  expensive  Mrs.  Heston  at  once  made  it  look 
superfluous  by  explaining  that  Mr.  Merrick  had  been  quite 
willing  to  drive  Caryl  back,  but  that  Caryl  had  refused.  She 
had.  Unusual  colour  in  her  cheeks  and  surprising  determin- 
ation in  her  voice  Caryl  had  refused  point-blank.  She  wasn't 
going,  she  said  to  her  mother  on  the  way  home,  to  smash  up 
the  week-end  like  that.  No  more  than  that:  she  wasn't  com- 
municative. She  only  leant  back  in  her  corner,  twisted  her 
face  as  though  her  foot  was  hurting  her  and  announced  in 
her  queer,  emphatic  way  that  she  was  tired  of  other  people's 
houses,  anyway. 

On  this  afternoon  Guen  and  Roberta  had  come  to  tea. 
Guen,  whose  imagination  always  stopped  short  at  birthday 
presents,  came  desiring  to  be  told  what  Caryl  wanted  most  (as 
if  people  ever  knew!)  and  Roberta,  whose  imagination  stopped 
short  of  most  things,  had  this  time  risen  to  the  occasion  with 
a  new  photograph  of  herself  in  a  silver  frame — at  which  Alice 
sniffed  perceptibly,  not  liking  Roberta  and  seeing  in  her  present 
only  one  more  thing  to  be  polished.  Later,  when  A.G.  and 
Allan  arrived,  there  was  to  be  a  family  gathering  to  dinner. 
Meantime  tea  and  chatter  of  presents  and  holidays  and  solici- 
tations over  Caryl's  injured  ankle.  Guen  said  very  little  and 
not  very  nice  things  (as  Caryl  pointed  out)  when  she  did; 
but  then  Guen's  new  book  was  due  in  a  few  days'  time,  which 
explained  her  mood  to  everybody  except  Roberta,  who  merely 
resented  it.  Caryl,  herself  to-day  not  quite  free  from  nerves, 
lay  on  her  couch,  monopolising  Roberta  and  coming  to  that 
cheerful  decision  about  her — that  she  was  a  really  excellent 
advertisement  for  matrimony.  And  most  women  weren't.  Not 


1 62  INTRUSION 

for  nothing  had  Caryl  watched  the  painful  metamorphosis  of 
several  of  her  acquaintances  who  had  exchanged  a  career  for 
a  husband  and  contrived  ever  afterwards  to  look  as  though 
the  change  disagreed  horribly  with  them.  As  though  nothing 
further  mattered  in  life,  they  had  "crumpled  up"  visibly;  had 
got  to  themselves  babies  and  nerves  and  a  general  indisposition 
to  brush  their  hair.  Not  that  the  crumpled-up  wives  admitted 
their  condition;  they  admitted  nothing  save  the  babies,  who 
were  self-evident.  Marriage  and  motherhood,  for  them,  were 
the  end  of  all  things:  contemplating  them  you  saw  life  as  a 
tunnel,  infrequently  lighted.  You  kept  coming  to  lamps  and 
passing  lamps.  You  moved  on  ...  always  leaving  things 
behind  .  .  .  always  coming  to  others.  .  .  .  School,  college  .  .  . 
love  .  .  .  marriage  .  .  .  experience  .  .  .  motherhood.  .  .  .  Not 
much  after  that,  perhaps,  but  more  motherhood.  .  .  .  Was  even 
that  as  dull  as  the  crumpled-up  wives  made  it  seem? 

Caryl,  passionately  fond  of  children  and  passionately  fond 
of  life,  wanted  to  know.  Since  it  couldn't  be  motherhood  that 
dulled  marriage,  was  it  marriage  that  dulled  motherhood? 
Was  marriage  the  last  lamp  in  the  tunnel? 

Here  was  Roberta,  not  exactly  saying  no  but  looking  it, 
certainly.  She  was  so  evidently  not  just  coming  to  lamps  and 
passing  them.  She  denied  the  metaphor  of  the  tunnel  alto- 
gether in  her  pretty  clothes  (that  Guen  had  helped  her  to 
choose)  and  with  her  sunny  looks.  Allan's  image  of  a  barefoot 
Roberta,  strolling  lazily  by  a  summer  stream,  was  much  more 
accurate  if  you  had  to  have  one,  even  now  that  she  wore  that 
strange  little  air,  that  those  other  women  had  worn,  of  knowl- 
edge, experience  .  .  .  initiation.  But  she  wore  it  with  a 
difference,  a  difference  so  immense,  so  unmistakable  that  Caryl 
positively  clanked  her  chains  before  it — her  chains  of  grati- 
tude and  affection.  But  certainly  Roberta  was  "different" 
from  those  others  Caryl  had  known  and  remembered.  It  was 
as  though,  giving  herself  reluctantly,  some  rag  of  her  virginity 
remained  yet  with  her,  as  though  it  peeped  out  beneath  the 
matron's  cloak  she  wore  so  prettily.  Roberta  didn't  look 
married.  That,  Caryl  decided,  was  the  secret  of  it.  Those 
others  had — and  so  early.  Finality  was  written  all  over  them. 
But  not  over  Roberta.  Roberta  had  made  marriage  not  the 
end,  but  the  beginning.  .  .  . 

"Of  what?"  Guen  wanted  to  know  when,  later,  Caryl  said 


INTRUSION  163 

that  to  her.  "Of  what?"  But,  like  Pilate,  Guen  did  not 
wait  for  an  answer.  A.G.  was  shouting  from  the  front  door 
that  they  would  lose  their  train. 


"The  bill  for  your  motor  ride's  come  in,"  Pen  told  Caryl 
the  next  morning  when  she  went  upstairs  to  fetch  her  break- 
fast tray. 

"Is  father  bearing  up?" 

"Fairly  well.  Says  it's  a  bit  thick  and  that  he  can't  for 
the  life  of  him  see  why  you  couldn't  have  accepted  Mr.  Mer- 
rick's  offer  and  saved  the  expense." 

"Oh,  can't  he?     Any  elaborations  of  his  state  of  mind?" 

"Not  many  .  .  .  except  that  Wokingham  to  Highgate's  no 
distance,  and  that  if  you'd  started  soon  after  breakfast  the 
young  man  could  have  got  back  in  excellent  time  for  his 
appointment.  .  .  .  Had  he  really  got  one,  Caryl?" 

"  'Course.  He  was  taking  Marjorie  over  to  White  Horse 
Hill  for  the  day.  .  .  .  Marjorie  suggested  it.  ...  I  happened 
to  overhear.  .  .  .  You  see,  I  was  tied  to  the  house  with  this 
beastly  foot.  I've  been  an  awful  nuisance  .  .  .  you  always  are 
in  other  people's  houses  when  things  happen  to  you,  and 
Marjorie  can't  stand  people  being  ill.  She  was  fed  up  with 
me  enough,  shouldn't  wonder,  as  it  was,  without  my  spoiling 
her  day.  I  had  to  play  the  game,  anyhow." 

"Marjorie's  game?" 

"And  Dick's." 

"Oh,  it's  Dick's,  too,  is  it?     Sure  of  that?" 

"No,"  said  Caryl.     "I'm  not  sure  of  anything." 

"My  recollection  of  Marjorie  Heston  is  that  from  her  cradle 
she's  dangled  men  after  her  and  cut  the  string  quite  comfort- 
ably when  the  young  man  at  the  end  of  it  became  tedious." 

"I  know  .  .  .  still,  this  may  be  the  real  thing.  You  have 
to  go  on  that  assumption.  ...  At  least,  I  do.  That's 
why  .  .  ." 

"You  choked  Master  Dick  off." 

"Why,  I  wouldn't  let  him  drive  me  up  on  Saturday." 

"But  you  did,  earlier  .  .  .  choke  him  off?" 

"Who  said  so?" 

"Does  it  matter?" 


1 64  INTRUSION 

Caryl  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"I  can  guess,"  she  said. 

"And  it's  true?" 

"Oh,  in  a  way,  perhaps.  I  don't  know.  You  see,  I  wasn't 
sure — and  I  thought  Marjorie  was.  I  couldn't  keep  him 
hanging  about.  ..." 

"But  surely  you  knew  .  .  .  whether  you  liked  him  or  not?" 

"Oh,  like  .  .  .  what  a  stupid  word!  Of  course  I  like  him. 
He's  what's  called  'popular.'  That  isn't  nearly  enough.  .  .  . 
I  couldn't  keep  him  hanging  about  while  I  studied  the  situa- 
tion." 

"But  why  study  it?" 

"Had  to — quite  suddenly.  Things  were  what  you  call  pre- 
cipitated." 

"How?" 

"Well,  Marjorie  had  a  head — and  it  was  raining.  We  both 
like  rain  .  .  .  Dick,  I  mean,  and  I  ...  so  we  went  out  together. 
We  had  only  one  umbrella,  and  it  began  to  pour  when  we 
were  in  the  wood.  We  stood  up  under  a  big  tree.  .  .  ." 

"And  he 'tried  to  kiss  you  ?     Well  ?" 

"Nothing  else — I  ran  away." 

"Heavens!"  said  Pen. 

"Pretty  feeble,  wasn't  it?" 

"Feeble!" 

"Well,  it's  some  time  ago,  thank  goodness. 

"When?" 

"Oh  .  .  .  months  .  .  .  April  .  .  .  June,  or  something  like 
that.  I  forget." 

She  didn't:  she  remembered  perfectly.  April — somewhere 
about  the  middle,  too,  because  the  land  was  dotted  with  the 
red  and  white  of  fruit  trees.  .  .  . 

"I  see,"  said  Pen.  "So  you  let  Marjorie  absorb  him.  .  .  . 
Was  he  absorbed?" 

"Not  altogether.     There  seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  him." 

"Too  much  for  Marjorie?  Or  is  it  only  that  the  victim 
struggles.  Does  he  struggle,  Caryl?" 

"Oh,  a  bit  ...  not  often,  though." 

"But  in  your  direction?" 

"Perhaps.  ...  I  don't  know.  It  isn't  any  good  talking 
about  it.  .  .  ." 

"But  wouldn't  it  be  just  as  well  to  make  up  your  mind?" 


INTRUSION  165 

"About  Dick?"  Caryl  shrugged  her  shoulders  again.  "I 
s'pose  so,  only — I  can't.  Oh,  look  here,  Pen,  you've  been 
through  it:  you  must  know.  How  does  one  tell — for  certain?" 

Pen  laughed. 

"You  missed  your  chance,"  she  said,  "that  day  in  the 
wood  .  .  .  under  the  umbrella." 

"You  mean  that  if  I'd  let  him  kiss  me  I'd  have  known?" 

"Something  like  that." 

"But  supposing  I'd  only  known  he  was  the  wrong  man?" 

"Well,  that's  it — you'd  have  known" 

"But  I  don't  want  the  wrong  man  to  kiss  me.  .  .  ." 

"That  does  complicate  matters,  rather,  but  still  you've  got 
to  begin  some  time." 

"But — with  the  wrong  man!" 

"Not  necessarily.  You  might  as  well  look  on  the  bright 
side." 

"Emulate  Mr.  Bennett,  in  fact." 

"Which  Mr.  Bennett?"  They  knew  several.  Mr.  Bennett 
the  milkman,  Mr.  Bennett  four  doors  away  .  .  .  and  the  man 
who  called  for  waste-paper.  .  .  . 

"Jane  Austen's,"  said  Caryl. 

Pen  laughed  and  said  "Oh!"  as  if  she'd  never  heard  of 
him — as  she  probably  hadn't. 

"It's  a  horrid  risk!"  said  Caryl.  "Dropping  kisses  about 
all  over  the  place  on  the  chance  of  one  of  'em  alighting  pres- 
ently upon  the  right  person." 

"But  kissing  isn't  horrid — except  when  the  man's  got  'wrong' 
written  all  over  him." 

"Not  for  you,  perhaps.  But,  then,  you  like  kissing  .  .  . 
you're  the  kissing  sort.  I'm  not.  Why,  I  don't  even  kiss  the 
family  except  on  special  occasions,  like  a  reunion  or  illness  or 
a  birthday." 

"I've  noticed  it,"  Pen  said. 

"Pen  .   .  .  how  many  'wrong'  ones  before  .  .   .  Tom?" 

"It's  an  improper  question,  but  I'd  tell  you  if  I  could 
remember." 

"Oh— as  many  as  all  that!" 

"There's  baby,"  said  Pen.  "I  must  go.  I'll  come  and  help 
you  into  your  clothes  presently.  Stay  where  you  are." 

Caryl  stayed.  Flat  on  her  pillows  she  lay  contemplating  the 
ceiling.  It  wanted  white-washing,  and  there  was  a  little  com- 


1 66  INTRUSION 

pany  of  flies  (that  ought  to  have  died,  by  now,  with  the 
summer)  chasing  each  other  in  circles  just  beneath  it.  Caryl 
hated  flies,  but  she  hated  fly-papers  and  fly-traps  even  more. 
So  she  had  to  put  up  with  the  flies.  They  were  disgusting,  she 
thought — but  so  were  kisses,  considered  as  arbiters  of  one's 
matrimonial  fate.  Arbiter  wasn't  the  word,  either:  it  suggested 
a  decision  from  which  there  was  no  appeal — something  that  was 
beyond  control.  .  .  .  And  a  kiss  wasn't — oughtn't  to  be,  any- 
way. A  kiss  could  be  influenced  by  many  things  .  .  .  ever 
so  many  things;  your  own  mood,  time,  place  .  .  .  and  the 
fact  that  you  knew  the  man  wanted  it;  especially  if  you 
were  a  philanthropist,  like  Pen.  Caryl's  thoughts  journeyed, 
like  the  flies,  in  a  circle.  There  was  no  end  to  this  sort  of 
thing. 

And  yet  she  didn't  see  how  you  could  take  things  .  .  .  your 
first  kiss!  .  .  .  quite  like  that.  One  had  standards — standards 
that  made  Pen's  implications  revolting.  And  not  only 
Pen's.  .  .  .  There  were  girls  she  knew  who  went  much  farther 
than  that;  who  made  experiments  that  went  far  beyond  a 
mere  kiss;  who  were  quite  candid — crude  even — about  it.  They 
weren't,  they  said,  going  to  miss  things;  they  weren't  going 
"to  tie  themselves  up"  without  knowing.  Only,  Caryl  wasn't 
like  them.  She  had  in  her  a  strain  of  the  Puritan  that  was  in 
Allan:  she  couldn't  bear  to  spoil  things — that  way  you  so 
easily  might.  The  Experimentalists  laughed  at  her,  called  her 
Diana  .  .  .  Artemis.  But  they  would  have  laughed,  too,  at 
Pen's  suggestion  that  a  kiss  could  help  you,  could  tell  you  all 
that. 

Weren't  there  people  who  "knew"  without — any  of  these 
things?  Guen  and  A.G.  must  have  known:  they  couldn't 
have  had  much  use — or  time — for  kisses.  .  .  .  Too  brainy  by 
half — the  marriage  of  pure  intellect.  Allan  must  have  known. 
And  Roberta?  You  couldn't  help  feeling  that  Pen  was  right 
when  she  said  that  no  kisses  given  or  returned  would  be  likely 
to  mean  much  to  Roberta.  Madeleine  remained.  "Nothing 
between  us,"  she  had  said  of  herself  and  Allan,  "not  even  a 
kiss."  Yet  Madeleine  had  known. 

And  she  hadn't.  That,  Caryl  knew,  was  the  hard  core  of  her 
depression — that  she  had  fallen  below  her  own  standards.  .  .  . 
It  might  or  might  not  be  absurd  to  run  from  a  kiss,  but  to  run 
because  you  simply  couldn't  decide  whether  you  wanted  it  or 


INTRUSION  167 

not  was  certainly  more  than  absurd.  It  wasn't,  she  knew,  the 
kiss  that  she  had  shrunk  from,  but  herself — and  her  own 
uncertainty  .  .  .  that  horrible,  clutching,  idiotic  fear  that  he 
who  offered  it  might  be  the  wrong  man,  that  she  couldn't  tell 
whether  he  was  or  not.  She  had,  first  of  all,  to  be  sure. 

She  wished  she  didn't  keep  remembering  that  day  in  the; 
Berkshire  wood;  the  dripping  trees  and  undergrowth;  herself 
and  Dick  beneath  one  umbrella,  arms  touching.  .  .  .  And 
presently  Dick's  face  very  near  hers  and  curiously  eager  and 
certain.  Oh,  yes,  Dick  had  been  certain  enough — of  himself, 
of  her.  And  she  had  pulled  herself  free  and  run.  .  .  .  She  saw 
herself  now  pushing  his  face  away,  racing  through  the  April 
woods — Artemis  .  .  .  Diana  .  .  .  flying  instinctively  from  the 
first  chord  of  love's  overture. . . . 

And  yet  not  Artemis,  not  Diana  at  all.  .  .  .  Perpetual  vir- 
ginity, chosen,  not  obligatory,  was  not  what  she  asked  of  life 
or  desired.  She  wanted  all  the  things  that  life  had  to  offer — 
the  smooth  with  the  rough,  pain,  joy,  happiness  and  unhappi- 
ness.  Fulfilment,  experience.  .  .  .  All  life  to  hold  in  her 
hands;  not  to  spill  or  reject  a  grain  of  it. 

It  was  not  as  Artemis  she  ran.  The  Experimentalists  were 
wrong.  Neither  as  a  coquette,  with  quick  feet  and  backward 
beckoning  glance.  Prude,  fool,  or  Impossible  Idealist?  Which 
of  these  three? 

She  knew.  Impossible  Idealist — saving  everything  for  the 
one  man,  not  wanting  to  spoil  things,  to  brush  off  the  bloom. 
How  the  Experimentalists  would  laugh! 


To-day  as  she  thought  of  these  things  Caryl's  straight  mouth 
hardened  into  a  thin  red  line  of  disgust.  The  Impossible 
Idealist  looked  frowning  out  of  her  short-lidded,  wide-open 
eyes,  seeing  Pen  and  the  Experimentalists  generally  as  prodi- 
gals, spoiling  things,  wasting  the  substance  of  life.  And  Caryl 
could  not  bear  to  waste  anything  at  all — not  so  much  as  a 
kiss.  .  .  .  Yet  if  you  wouldn't  risk  spoiling  things  you  took  the 
much  bigger  risk  of  missing  them  altogether.  Well,  suppos- 
ing she  had  missed — this,  whatever  it  was?  Supposing  Dick 
married  Marjorie?  One  got  over  that  sort  of  thing — at  least, 
the  right  sort  of  girl  got  over  it.  One  belonged  to  a  generation 


1 68  INTRUSION 

that  no  longer  accepted  the  Byronic  ipse  dixit  about  love — 
"that  sort"  of  love.  One  knew,  now,  that  it  wasn't  the  whole 
edifice  of  life,  but  just  one  department.  Important,  no  doubt, 
but  still,  only  one  department.  There  was  much  more  in  the 
world,  in  life,  than  love  and  marriage.  You  didn't  want  to 
miss  them,  of  course,  but  you  very  well  might  since  there 
weren't  enough  men  to  go  round.  .  .  .  And  if  you  did — if  this 
department  of  life  never  opened  to  you — nobody  was  going  to 
make  you  believe  there  was  nothing  else  at  all  worth  while. 
That  was  the  sort  of  thing  men  liked  to  believe — and  one  sort 
of  woman.  But  always  there  was  Madeleine  giving  it  the  lie — 
Madeleine,  who  knew  it  wasn't  what  you  took  out  of  life,  but 
what  you  put  in  that  counted;  not  what  you  received,  but 
what  you  gave— of  effort  and  courage  and  truth. 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

THE  process  of  "moulding"  Roberta  went  on. 
Her  occasional  visits  to  the  Poetry  Circle  were  meant 
to  contribute  towards  it,  but  the  interest  she  found  in 
them  was  of  a  very  different  kind  from  that  which  Allan  im- 
£gined.  Here  in  that  stuffy  room  in  the  Tottenham  Court  Road 
she  met  some  of  the  people  Guen  used  to  coax  out  on  rare 
occasions  to  the  suburbs — among  them  Constance  Maugham 
and  Grace  Hardwick.  Grace  Hardwick,  Allan  told  her,  wrote 
satirical  novels  and  vers  Ubre,  the  one  as  a  relaxation  from 
the  other,  though  he  could  never  remember  which  way  round 
it  was.  He  also  said  that  she  held  some  position  in  the  Post 
Office,  and  that  all  the  other  people  who  did  wished  that  Miss 
Hardwick  did  not.  She  bored  Allan  because  she  kept  all  her 
brilliant  remarks  for  her  novels,  and  he  found  it  exhausting 
to  try  to  get  some  glimpse  of  the  clever  novelist  through  the 
very  dull  things  she  said  as  a  woman.  Roberta,  too,  thought 
Miss  Hardwick  dull — though  for  quite  other  reasons.  But  she 
liked  her  clothes  and  understood  that  she  wore  furs  not  because 
it  was  cold  (it  wasn't),  but  because  furs  suited  her.  The  sort 
of  woman,  she  said  afterwards  to  Tommy,  who  at  the  fall  of 
the  first  leaf  rushes  to  take  her  furs  out  of  cold  storage. 

Miss  Maugham  was  well  dressed,  too,  in  a  grey  frock  made 
by  somebody  whose  idea  of  a  frock  was  evidently  that  it  should 
look  as  much  like  a  coat  as  possible.  Roberta,  taking  in  its 
details,  decided  that  she  had  never  really  understood  before 
how  very  trying  the  colour  grey  could  be.  She  was,  moreover, 
terribly  bored  by  Constance  Maugham,  who  had  told  her  that 
poetry  had  become  a  fashionable  occupation  of  the  moneyed 
and  criticism  a  thing  of  cliques  and  coteries.  She  seemed  quite 
worried  about  it. 

Besides  the  Poetry  Circle,  Roberta  thanked  heaven  (here,  ten 
weeks  after  her  marriage!)  there  was  Caryl.  And  Caryl,  hav- 

169 


170  INTRUSION 

ing  sat  for  her  B.A.  Honours  degree  in  October,  was,  here  at 
the  beginning  of  November,  taking  a  rest.  Roberta  liked 
Caryl  because,  as  she  said  to  Allan,  she  was  "jolly"  and  didn't 
think  her  stupid  because  she  didn't  like  books.  The  two  of 
them  came  to  see  a  good  deal  of  each  other,  and  Allan,  though 
not  in  the  least  understanding  the  friendship,  bestowed  his 
blessing  upon  it.  But  whilst  Roberta's  friendship  with  Caryl 
was  one  thing,  that  with  Tommy  Carew  was  quite  another. 
Allan  regarded  Tommy  as  a  doubtful  ingredient  in  this  care- 
ful moulding  process  upon  which  he  was  embarked,  and  he 
had  been  glad  that,  despite  Tommy's  epistolary  expression  of 
a  wish  to  "foregather,"  Roberta  had  seen  nothing  of  her  since 
her  return  from  France;  and  then,  one  evening  in  early  Novem- 
ber, from  the  front  row  of  the  pit  at  the  St.  James's,  Roberta 
espied  her  sitting  luxuriously  in  the  stalls  with  Mr.  Rayne. 
Essentially  an  evening-dress  woman,  Tommy  wore  a  bright 
orange  frock  cut  to  reveal  an  alarming  expanse  of  alabaster 
shoulder.  She  looked  vivid  and  blatant  and  alive.  Mr.  Rayne 
was  neat,  smooth  and  insolently  self-possessed.  Allan  hated 
the  way  he  stuck  his  feet  straight  out  beneath  the  opposite  stall 
and  roved  an  appraising  eye  over  the  femininity  that  surrounded 
him.  But  more  than  all  else  he  hated  the  taxi-driver  whose 
obduracy  landed  them  into  an  encounter  in  the  street  when  the 
play  was  done,  for  Rayne  turned  away  from  the  squabble  and 
the  taxi  just  in  time  to  cannon  heavily  into  Roberta.  There 
followed  mutual  apologies,  recognitions  and  Mr.  Rayne's  state- 
ment that  Count  Tolstoy's  play  (which  he  referred  to  as  "the 
show")  had  bored  him  stiff.  Roberta,  who  had  also  been 
bored  by  it,  seemed  to  find  Mr.  Rayne  interesting,  and  in  the 
subsequent  quartette,  which  walked  down  Piccadilly  and  split 
neatly  into  twos,  it  was  Roberta  who  walked  with  Rayne,  while 
Tommy  and  Allan  brought  up  the  rear.  The  talk,  so  far  as 
Allan  and  Tommy  were  concerned,  harked  back  to  Tolstoy. 
For  Allan  the  play  had  been  a  quite  remarkable  but  unsatis- 
factory performance,  that  had  revealed  to  him  the  immense 
gulf  fixed  between  the  Russian  temperament  and  the  English, 
and  the  fact  that  there  is,  as  yet,  no  bridge  wide  enough  to 
span  it.  All  the  evening  it  had  been  this  sense  of  a  foreign 
temperament  which  had  come  between  Allan  and  the  stage, 
pulling  the  fabric  of  the  play  into  a  myriad  loose  ends  which 
had  defied  his  efforts  to  gather  them  up  and  wind  them  upon 


INTRUSION  171 

the  skein  of  understanding.  But  no  such  attempts  had  both- 
ered Tommy  Carew,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  Russian  novel 
and  had  found  it  a  good  deal  simpler  to  regard  Fedya  Protasov 
as  an  Englishman.  And  as  an  Englishman,  of  course,  Fedya 
was  simply  unaccountable.  She  was  slightly  baffled  by  Allan's 
"We  are  an  egotistic  race!"  but  was  not  reduced  to  silence. 
She  loved  to  hear  the  sound  of  her  own  voice.  Allan  judged 
she  was  one  of  those  incorrigible  people  who  go  to  the  theatre 
to  be  amused,  and  it  puzzled  him  that  she  should  have  gone 
to  see  Reparation.  He  learned  later  that  she  had  complimen- 
tary tickets  and  it  was  evident  that  she  had  had  her  amusement, 
though  it  was  of  an  oblique  sort.  It  was  all  one  to  Tommy. 

At  the  tube  was  the  usual  theatre  crowd,  and  to  please 
Roberta  Allan  agreed  to  be  taken  to  the  Macasnas  cafe  for 
coffee.  "You'll  miss  the  crowd,"  Tommy  said  as  they  went 
along,  "and  sometimes  the  Macaenas  is  quite  good  fun.  You 
can  make  as  much  row  as  you  like,  and  if  you're  looking  for 
copy.  .  .  ." 

Allan  wasn't.  He  wasn't  looking  for  anything  save  some 
reason  why  he  wanted  to  push  Rayne  off  into  the  gutter  as 
Roberta  trotted  along  in  her  absurd  shoes  at  his  side ;  and  why 
every  time  his  hand  touched  her  arm  and  every  time  she 
smiled  at  him  in  that  tantalising  downward  fashion  Allan  knew 
so  well,  a  sharp  little  pain  should  dart  through  him  and  leave 
him  quivering. 

The  cafe  when  they  reached  it,  proved  disappointing.  It 
was  small  and  ugly  and  very  full — of  smoke  and  human  beings, 
mostly  men,  with  a  sprinkling  of  women  in  odd,  gaily-coloured 
clothes,  a  good  many  of  whom  Tommy  seemed  to  know.  The 
noise  and  heat  were  intolerable.  Everybody  talked  and  smoked 
and  drank  coffee  or  liqueurs  or  tea  out  of  glasses.  Rayne 
ordered  coffees  and  creme  de  menthe  liqueurs,  and  while  they 
drank  them  a  young  man  at  the  next  table  tried  to  persuade 
them  to  play  football  with  his  bowler  hat.  He  was  summarily 
suppressed  by  Tommy,  who  picked  up  his  gloves  from  the 
floor,  stuffed  them  into  his  pocket  and  advised  him  to  go  home. 

"You're  a  nice  girl,"  he  said. 

"I  know,"  said  Tommy.  "Do  go  home.  You're  very 
drunk.  I'll  have  that  game  of  football  to-morrow." 

"Riyouah,"  said  the  young  man  and  lurched  out  into  the 
night. 


INTRUSION 

"The  Macsenas,"  said  Tommy,  with  a  yawn,  "is  one  of 
those  places  that  never  are  but  always  to  be — raided  by  the 
police.  It's  damn  dull  here  to-night.  Let's  hop  it." 

Allan  thought  it  was  dull,  too,  and  as  a  preliminary  to 
"hopping  it"  called  to  the  proprietor  for  a  bill.  The  man 
worked  a  complicated  sum  on  the  corner  of  the  table  and 
announced  "Twelve  zheelings  and  zixpence,  if  you  please." 

"His  arithmetic's  as  queer  as  Sir  Auckland  Geddes',"  Tommy 
said;  but  no  one  disputed  Allan's  right  to  be  the  victim  of  it. 

"We  must  meet  again,"  Mr.  Rayne  said  affably  when  they 
got  outside.  "Your  wife  and  I  are  quite  old  friends,  Mr. 
Suffield."  And  again  Allan  thought  how  really  nice  it  would 
be  to  knock  Mr.  Rayne  off  the  pavement  into  the  gutter! 

"We  foregather  every  Thursday,"  Tommy  told  him.  "Why 
not  look  us  up?  Bobbie  knows  the  address." 

Allan  murmured  excuses  which  Tommy  seemed  not  to  hear. 

"Any  old  time,"  she  said,  "always  delighted,  I'm  sure." 

Allan  and  Roberta  caught  the  last  tube,  but  the  bus  upon 
which  they  had  been  relying  at  the  other  end  was  gone,  and 
they  had  to  walk.  They  were  very  tired,  but  Roberta  said  she'd 
had  a  jolly  evening  and  that  it  was  worth  it.  Allan  began  to 
say  that  he  was  afraid  they  were  incurring  extravagant  habits: 
he  thought  they'd  have  to  begin  retrenching. 

"Oh,  what  a  shame!"  Roberta  said.    "It's  been  so  nice." 

"Well,  we  won't  talk  of  it  now,"  Allan  said.  "The  night's 
too  good.  Isn't  it  perfectly  wonderful,  Bobbie?  You'd  never 
dream  it  was  November." 

They  walked  on,  arm  in  arm,  silently,  the  early  November 
night  wrapping  them  round.  After  the  hot  cafe  the  air  on 
their  faces  was  like  a  cool  hand  stretched  out  in  the  darkness, 
and  over  the  tree-tops  the  stars  hung  like  a  crown  of  silver. 
The  moon,  very  pale  and  young,  swam  in  a  sea  of  sapphire. 

That  walk  after  midnight  through  the  quiet  streets  of  a  North 
London  suburb  passed  steadfastly  into  Allan's  memory.  It 
stood  clear.  Etched  in  lines  of  black  and  silver  it  remained, 
undimmed  of  time  and  change.  And  with  it  was  treasured  up 
the  vision  of  Roberta's  face  and  the  sound  of  her  pretty  voice 
that  never  said  anything  that  mattered,  that  said  to-night  that 
its  owner  had  had  such  a  jolly  evening.  .  .  .  Always  it  seemed 
as  though  the  night  had  taken  her  beauty  and  folded  it  closely 
in  the  mesh  of  its  own,  so  that  the  loveliness  of  the  stars 
belonged  to  it  and  the  quiet  of  the  sleeping  earth.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  SIX 


TWO  days  later  the  morning  post  brought  a  confirmation 
of  Tommy's  invitation  and  an  invitation  of  another  sort 
from  Hilmer  Roydon.  He  wanted,  so  he  said,  some 
special  photographs  for  an  exhibition,  and  he  begged  Roberta 
to  give  him  a  sitting.  For  reasons  of  her  own  Roberta  said 
nothing  of  this  to  Allan,  hiding  its  arrival  under  that  of 
Tommy's.  And  Tommy's  invitation  Allan  persuaded  her  to 
forego. 

"There's  no  point,  darling,  in  knowing  that  crowd  of 
hangers-on.  And  they'll  make  you  discontented  and  dissatis- 
fied. I  don't  want  you  made  either." 

Roberta  wrote  pleading  a  prior  engagement,  but  she  was 
inclined  to  repent  her  acquiescence  in  what  she  called  Allan's 
"prejudices"  when  she  found  that  he  had  come  home  that 
evening  to  write.  She,  for  her  part,  dragged  a  heap  of  mend- 
ing from  a  cupboard  and  sorted  it  listlessly  into  its  two  piles 
of  "Must  Be  Dones"  and  "May  Be  Lefts."  The  "Must  Be 
Dones"  were  appallingly  numerous  and  she  went  at  them 
viciously,  occasionally  relieving  her  feelings  by  throwing  a  badly 
afflicted  sock  or  stocking  on  to  the  fire.  "It's  no  good,  I 
simply  can't  mend  that  .  .  .  it's  more  hole  than  sock,"  she'd  say 
when  with  a  questioning  look  Allan  glanced  up  from  his  work 
and  wrinkled  his  nose  at  the  smell  of  burning.  At  ten  o'clock 
she  gave  it  up  and  retired  to  bed,  where,  an  hour  later,  Allan 
discovered  her  in  tears  and  temper.  It  wasn't  easy  to  pacify 
her  nor  to  get  at  the  root  of  her  complaint.  But  he  gathered 
she'd  been  dull  and  felt  neglected. 

"But,  darling,  we've  been  out  so  much  .  .  .  four  evenings 
practically  out  of  every  six.  .  .  .  And  I  did  want  to  work 
to-night." 

173 


174  INTRUSION 

"Then  you  might  have  let  me  go  to  Tommy's.  That 
wouldn't  have  cost  anything,  except  my  fare  to  Bloomsbury." 

Allan  weakened. 

"We  can't  go  into  all  that  again  now.  You  know  what  I 
think  about  it." 

Two  days  later  at  four  o'clock  Roberta  received  a  telegram 
from  Allan  which  told  her  not  to  expect  him  before  eleven. 
He  had  been  asked  to  work  late.  Roberta  swam  down  a  rushing 
torrent  of  resentment  during  the  evening  and  had  landed  herself 
in  a  whirlpool  of  self-pity  by  the  time  Allan  reached  home. 
She  complained  that  she  hated  being  alone  in  the  evenings. 

"How  long  is  this  late  work  going  on?" 

"Until  Christmas,"  Allan  told  her.  "Seven  weeks,  about. 
I  needn't  have  accepted.  I  did  it  for  policy.  You  see,  we 
shall  be  very  glad  of  the  money.  We've  been  very  extravagant 
of  late." 

"Oh,  dear,  I  hate  all  this  about  money!"  Roberta  moaned. 

"So  do  I.  I've  always  hated  it.  But  what's  to  be  done? 
We  must  have  money,  unfortunately.  Of  course,  we  could 
plunge  ...  go  away  into  the  country  somewhere  and  chance 
our  luck.  A.G.  could  get  me  a  good  deal  of  reviewing.  .  .  . 
I  haven't  time  for  much  now.  And  you  can  live  much  more 
cheaply  in  the  country.  I'm  game  if  you  are." 

But  Roberta  wasn't.  She  dismissed  his  ridiculous  scheme 
in  three  words. 

"Don't  be  silly!"  she  said.  "Do  you  mean  to  go  on  with 
this  late  work?" 

Allan  bumped  back  to  earth.  "I  think  I  must,"  he  said, 
bending  his  head  before  this  strong  wind  of  ways  and  means. 

"And  what  happens  to  me?"  said  Roberta. 

"Nice  things,  I  hope."  He  outlined  them.  Teas  and  din- 
ners at  Adelaide  Lodge:  visits  to  the  theatre  or  pictures  with 
her  mother  or  Caryl.  They  sounded  dull  to  Roberta,  who 
hated  what  she  called  the  "family  stunt."  Also,  she  noticed 
he  had  not  included  Tommy.  She  supposed  he  imagined  he 
had  disposed  of  Tommy  once  and  for  all. 

"It's  hateful  being  poor,"  she  complained. 

"There  are  worse  things,  darling,"  Allan  said. 

"Then  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what  they  are.  I  think  money's 
frightfully  important.  I  wish  you'd  let  me  earn  some." 

"How  do  you  mean?" 


INTRUSION  175 

"With  Kilmer  Roydon." 

"But  I  thought  you  hated  the  studio?  You  were  quite  glad 
to  leave  it." 

"I  know  .  .  .  but  I  thought  we'd  be  better  off  ...  I  don't 
want  to  go  back  in  the  old  way.  Only  just  for  occasional 
photos." 

"For  the  tubes?" 

"No,  not  always.  There  are  exhibitions  .  .  .  things  like 
that" 

"Darling,  I'd  so  much  rather  you  didn't." 

"But  it  would  only  be  occasionally,  and  the  money'd  be  so 
useful." 

"We're  not  so  hard  up  as  all  that." 

"I  am.    I  haven't  a  sixpence  of  my  own." 

"But  my  dear  girl,  you  can  have  what  you  want,  within 
reason.  It  isn't  my  money,  but  ours." 

Roberta  settled  herself  in  bed  and  turned  her  back  on  the 
argument  and  on  Allan. 

"I  think  that's  a  perfectly  silly  thing  to  say,"  she  remarked. 

And  there  the  subject  ended.  But  Roberta's  decision  was 
made.  The  next  morning  she  sent  Roydon  a  reply  in  the 
affirmative,  making  an  appointment  for  Thursday  of  that 
week.  Later  Tommy  turned  up  unexpectedly  to  tea  and  agreed 
with  Roberta  that  if  people  wouldn't  let  you  be  honest  you  had 
to  deceive  them.  Anything,  anyway,  for  a  quiet  life. 

"Thursday's  my  'do,' "  she  said.  "You'd  better  make  a  day 
of  it  and  come  on  to  lunch  when  Roydon's  finished  with  you. 
And  don't  be  surprised  if  you  find  Duggie  there.  .  .  ." 

Duggie  was  there  and  looking  very  much  at  home,  his  feet 
on  the  mantelpiece  and  a  whisky-and-soda  at  his  side.  He 
greeted  Roberta  with  affability  and  paid  her  neatly-turned  com- 
pliments while  Tommy  dug  out  a  fragmentary  lunch  from 
unexpected  places  and  planked  it  down  in  places  even  more 
unexpected. 

Roberta  saw,  she  could  not  help  seeing,  that  Mr.  Rayne's 
eyes  rested  upon  her  appreciatively.  But  Roberta  was  used  to 
that.  What  she  did  not  see  was  that  his  eyes,  insolently  steady, 
divested  her  of  clothing,  left  her  naked  to  his  cold,  appraising 
gaze.  She  judged  him  by  what  he  said,  and  that  was  correct 
and  casual  enough. 

"Do  much  of  this  sort  of  work?" 


176  INTRUSION 

"Not  now." 

"Husband  object,  eh?" 

"He  would  if  he  knew." 

"Ah  ...  so  he  doesn't  know?" 

Roberta  blushed. 

"I  hate  rows,"  she  said. 

"So  do  I.  You're  a  wise  child,  Bobbie.  Bring  up  a  husband 
in  the  way  he  should  go.  Modern  woman  idea  .  .  .  independence 
and  all  that.  Quite  right.  ...  I  hope  you  don't  mind  my  calling 
you  Bobbie.  Ethel  May  said  I  might." 

"But  I  didn't  say  you  might  call  me  'Ethel  May,' "  Tommy 
observed.  "Here,  hike  over  the  cheese." 

Duggie  "hiked"  it  over. 

"I  wonder,"  he  said  to  Roberta,  "if  you'll  let  me  take  a 
couple  of  photographs  one  day?  It's  just  a  hpbby  of  mine.  .  .  . 
I  might  be  able  to  get  you  a  commission  for  our  cigarette 
boxes  ...  if  you  care  about  that  sort  of  thing.  The  guvnor 
likes  variety  and  he'd  consider  any  friend  of  mine.  .  .  Perhaps 
you'll  come  along  and  see  my  studio  one  day.  It's  quite 
pretty,  isn't  it,  Ethel  May?  You  can  bring  her  with  you  as 
a  sop  to  Mrs.  Grundy  and  A  Possibly  Jealous  Husband.  .  .  ." 

And  when  Roberta  hesitated  Tommy  said:  "That's  it,  Bob- 
bie. Keep  him  in  his  place.  Don't  let  him  think  you're  ready 
to  jump.  .  .  .  Here,  have  another  tomato,  and  when  you've  done 
sitting  on  the  butter,  Dug,  I'd  like  a  bit." 

Mr.  Rayne  handed  over  the  butter,  or  as  much  of  it  as  was 
not  adhering  to  his  trousers,  and  smiled  abstractedly  in 
Roberta's  direction. 

"Ever  thought  of  going  on  the  pictures?"  he  enquired. 

"Well .  .  .  not  lately,"  Roberta  confessed. 

"Shouldn't  if  I  were  you,"  Tommy  said.  "Thinking's  the 
devil.  Never  think.  My  motto." 

"We're  aware  of  it,  dearest,"  Duggie  assured  her.  "Also 
that  this  is  very  rotten  coffee.  Your  idea  of  coffee,  Ethel  May, 
is  suburban." 

"Well,  there's  a  Lyons  round  the  corner,"  said  Tommy. 

"I'd  thought  of  that.  ...  A  word  in  your  ear,  Bobbie. 
If  you  ever  decide  to  go  on  the  pictures  I  hope  you'll  work  a 
little  harder  than  Ethel  May.  Ethel  ought  to  be  earning  pots. 
But  Ethel  isn't.  'Cos  why?  'Cos  no  producer  in  England  can 
depend  upon  her.  She  says  she  finds  it  tiring  being  a  vamp." 


INTRUSION  177 

"So  it  is,"  said  Tommy.  "You  try  it  and  see.  And  I  wish 
you'd  go  out  for  a  little  while.  I  want  to  have  a  feminine  jaw. 
Can't  you  see  it  in  my  eye?" 

"Can  I  go  and  sponge  your  butter  off  my  trousers  first?" 

"Water's  no  good.  There's  some  benzine  in  the  kitchen. 
It  has  a  nasty  temper.  It  evaporates  if  you  leave  the  cork 
out,  and  if  you  get  it  near  the  gas  it's  you  who'll  evaporate." 

Mr.  Rayne  was  some  time  over  the  benzine  and  his  trousers, 
but  eventually  he  went  and  Tommy  and  Roberta  had  things 
to  themselves.  The  "feminine  jaw"  was  fairly  comprehensive, 
and  when  at  the  end  of  it  Tommy  suggested  that  Roberta 
might  like  to  wash,  the  moralist  might  have  thought  that  it 
was  not  alone  Roberta's  hands  which  needed  to  be  washed.  .  .  . 
Yet  it  was  not  what  Tommy  said  so  much  as  what  she  implied; 
her  cynical  attitude  to  life;  her  cold,  calm  sensualism,  her 
"pricing"  of  everything  on  earth,  her  denial  of  the  godhead  in 
humanity.  Her  tongue  left  neither  Galahad  clean  nor  Lancelot 
brave.  .  .  . 

"You  know  where  the  bath-room  is?"  she  said. 

Roberta  did,  and  went  to  it.  Tommy,  too,  got  up  and  went 
into  her  bedroom,  which  might  have  been  tidier.  She  pushed 
up  a  window,  removed  Mr.  Rayne's  pipe  from  her  dressing- 
table,  shut  up  odds  and  ends  in  a  drawer,  threw  Mr.  Rayne's 
slippers  into  the  wardrobe  and  camouflaged  his  silk  pyjamas 
with  the  eiderdown  quilt.  These  things  done  she  stood  for  a 
moment  looking  round.  "All  serene,"  she  reflected;  nothing 
remained  in  evidence  calculated  to  bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek 
of  the  young  person. 

"Right-o!"  she  called  to  the  particular  young  person  who 
was  asking  on  the  other  side  of  the  door  if  she  might  come  in. 
She  came  in,  took  the  pins  out  of  her  hair  and  said  she  didn't 
agree  with  all  Tommy  had  been  saying.  She  thought  the  world 
was  perfectly  disgusting. 

"You  can't  speak  to  a  man  without  his  imagining  things," 
she  complained. 

"I  know,"  said  Tommy,  "but  they're  right,  you  know,  nine 
times  out  of  ten.  All  women  aren't  lumps  of  ice,  like  you.  They 
do  really  want  the  things  you  call  horrid,  my  girl — the  plain, 
blunt,  physical  act  called  marriage,  that  hasn't  got  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  orange  blossom  and  white  satin  and  a 
ceremony  in  some  church.  A  man,  not  a  husband.  .  .  .  Sorry 


178  INTRUSION 

to  be  so  brutal,  my  dear,  but  you  mustn't  mistake  coldness  for 
virtue." 

"But  there  are  other  things  in  life." 

"None  so  important.  Sex,  you  can  take  it  from  me,  rules 
the  world — whether  you  like  it  or  not.  I've  known  that  since 
I  was  seventeen.  So've  you — only  you  won't  admit  it." 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind  admitting  it — only  it  doesn't  appeal  to  me, 
that  side  of  life." 

"No,  duckie,  but  it  appeals  to  other  people.  Try  and  remem- 
ber that.  Let's  trot  back,  shall  we?" 

They  trotted  back  and  pursued  this  entertaining  subject  of 
marriages  and  husbands  until  Mr.  Rayne  returned  with  several 
bottles  in  brown  paper,  a  promise  of  others  that  were  being 
"sent  round,"  and  a  demand  for  tea. 

Tommy's  guests  proved  to  be  a  heterogeneous  collection  of 
invertebrates,  for  whom  life  was  little  but  a  peregrination  from 
one  Soho  restaurant  to  another,  with  brief  intervals  for  a  vague 
something  they  referred  to  as  "work,"  and  of  which  they  didn't 
seem  too  fond.  They  viewed  the  world  through  a  perpetual 
haze  of  tobacco  smoke,  squinted  at  life  over  the  rim  of  a  liqueur 
glass.  .  .  .  They  had  a  profound  contempt  for  the  people  who 
lived  in  neat  houses,  paid  their  bills  and  kept  regular  hours. 
Some  of  the  men  had  been  in  the  Army,  but  the  Army  had 
done  little  for  them  beyond  colouring  their  vocabulary.  Besides, 
they  hated  the  war  because  of  its  uprooting  tendencies  and 
because  it  had  "spoiled"  the  Cafe  Royal.  Hatred  is  a  stronger 
cement  than  love,  and  it  was  the  hates  of  these  people  that 
held  them  together.  They  all  hated  the  same  people  and  the 
same  things,  and  through  all  their  jabber  of  studios  and  New 
Art  and  "movements"  and  the  sex  adventures  of  themselves 
and  their  friends,  that  fact  emerged  clear  and  unmistakable. 

They  had,  between  them,  plenty  of  parlour  tricks:  they 
could,  in  their  way,  be  entertaining:  their  scandalous  talk 
had  point  and  wit:  their  common  hatreds  had  at  least  the 
virtue  of  virility — the  only  things  about  them,  perhaps,  that 
had.  They  flamed  together  this  evening  against  two  of  their 
number  who  had  committed  the  solecism  of  marriage.  Really, 
this  sort  of  thing  wasn't  done.  The  company  frowned  upon 
bride  and  bridegroom  who,  between  them,  had  so  seriously 
lowered  the  moral  currency,  and  a  girl  with  a  pale  face  and  a 
mouth  scarlet  as  her  frock — and  her  language — announced 


INTRUSION  179 

that  she  wasn't  going  to  be  any  gentleman's  sanguinary  bride, 
thank  you  very  much  .  .  .  too  damn  monotonous.  Roberta, 
who,  as  a  respectably  married  woman,  was  beginning  to  feel 
uncomfortable,  was  grateful  to  a  frowsy  individual  in  check 
trousers  who  at  this  point  interrupted  the  disquisition  on  the 
moralities  by  taking  a  poem  from  his  pocket  and  beginning  to 
read  it  aloud.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  it  and  it  concerned 
a  girl  limned  with  yellow  and  with  orange  hair  who  had  danced 
naked  on  an  emerald  lawn  while  the  sun  went  down  in  the 
sky  like  a  rotting  peach,  and  who  eventually  had  her  brains 
knocked  out  by  a  proud  gentleman  with  a  clipped  black  mous- 
tache, mobile  eyes  and  deliberate  chin,  who  appeared  to  object 
to  her  morals.  The  audience,  who  didn't,  showed  signs  of 
restiveness  when  it  became  apparent  that  the  poet  desired  to 
repeat  the  poem  about  the  gentleman  who  did. 

"One  poem,  once,"  Tommy  told  him,  "is  all  right.  The 
same  poem,  twice,  is  a  blasted  nuisance.  Besides,  your  lemon 
and  orange  girl  can't  stand  having  her  brains  clubbed  out  twice 
in  the  same  evening,  and  the  gentleman  with  the  moustaches 
oughn't  to  be  encouraged  to  make  a  habit  of  it.  Now  go  and 
sit  in  a  corner  and  keep  quiet." 

To  that  end  they  gave  him  some  wine  and  the  girl  in  the 
scarlet  frock  and  got  back  to  the  things  that  mattered.  Later 
they  wound  up  the  gramophone  and  there  was  dancing.  Danc- 
ing was  emphatically  one  of  the  things  that  "mattered" — which 
was  probably  why  the  good  dancers  went  about  it  with  the 
solemn  faces  of  mutes  at  a  funeral  and  frowned  at  the  bad 
ones  who  kicked  their  heels  about  and  seemed  to  be  enjoying 
themselves. 

Roberta  danced  all  the  time  with  Duggie  Rayne — in  a  sort 
of  ecstasy  of  silence.  With  her  firm  young  body  pressed  close 
against  his,  speech  for  Mr.  Rayne  was  certainly  supererogatory : 
his  reasons  for  dancing  were  hardly  conversational.  But  at 
the  end,  when,  like  any  Cinderella,*  Roberta  flew  from  the 
festive  dance,  he  whispered,  "You  dance  divinely,  little  girl. 
Come  again." 


She  did.     She  went  twice  and  then  Allan  found  out,  for 
again  like  Cinderella,  she  failed  one  evening  to  leave  quite 


1 8o  INTRUSION 

fearly  enough,  and  when  she  reached  home  Allan  had  already 
arrived  and  was  raking  about  in  the  kitchen,  in  the  pathetic 
male  fashion,  for  something  to  eat.  Taken  unawares  Roberta 
could  think  of  no  explanation  that  would  avoid  the  truth.  It 
was  only  half-past  eleven,  so  obviously  she  had  not  been  to  a 
theatre — even  if,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  she  could  have 
thought  of  some  explanation  of  seats  which  would  justify  her 
frock.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  the  truth.  Allan,  she 
thought,  took  it  well.  He  was  very  quiet. 

"Is  this  the  first  time?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  said  Roberta,  who  thought  she  might  as  well  be 
hung  for  a  sheep  as  for  a  lamb,  "I've  been  twice  before." 

"Why  didn't  you  tell  me?" 

"I  thought  you'd  say  I  wasn't  to  ...  I  mean,  I  thought  you 
wouldn't  like  it." 

"I  don't,  but  still  less  do  I  like  things  done  behind  my 
back." 

Roberta's  red  mouth  pouted,  but  said  nothing. 

"Are  there  many  of  them,  Roberta?" 

"Many  of  what?" 

"These  things  you  don't  tell  me  of." 

"No  .  .  .  not  many." 

"What  others?" 

"I  can't  think  of  any  .  .  ." 

"Roberta!  Do  let  us  be  honest  with  each  other.  Why 
couldn't  you  have  been  honest  about  this?" 

"I  would  have,  only  I  do  hate  a  fuss.  And  you  would  have 
made  a  fuss.  You're  like  mother." 

"But  don't  you  see  that  even  a  fuss,  as  you  call  it,  is  better 
than  deception?  It's  awful  for  two  people  who  are  married 
not  to  trust  each  other." 

"I  do  trust  you,  Allan." 

"We  don't  keep  things  from  people  we  trust,  Bobbie." 

"Well — you  shouldn't  be  so  critical." 

"Of  whom?" 

"Well,  of  Tommy.    You  don't  know  anything  about  her." 

"I  only  know  that  her  standards  are  not  ours,  and  that  the 
only  influence  she  can  have  on  you  will  be  an  unsettling  one. 
I  don't  want  to  spoil  your  pleasures,  but  I  don't  want  people 
to  come  along  and  make  you  discontented.  I  know  you  don't 
have  all  the  things  you  want:  I  wish  I  could  give  you  more: 


INTRUSION  181 

but  we  do  have  a  good  deal  more  than  many  people — and  it 
isn't  money  that  makes  you  happy." 

"But  not  having  it  makes  you  unhappy,"  said  Roberta. 

"Rubbish!     You're  not  unhappy,  are  you?" 

"I'm  a  bit  lonely.  .  .  ." 

"Still?  Look  here,  shall  I  cancel  this  evening  work?  I  can, 
now,  if  I  like.  .  .  .  Otherwise,  it's  going  on  till  Christmas.  It's 
for  you  to  say." 

"I  wouldn't  like  you  to  do  that,"  Roberta  said.  "I  shall 
be  all  right.  Caryl  was  talking  about  a  dance  the  other 
night  .  .  .  and,  oh,  I  daresay  I'll  get  used  to  it.  ...  Of  course, 
if  you're  going  to  make  me  promise  not  to  go  to  Tommy's  .  .  ." 

"I'm  not,"  said  Allan.  "I  don't  issue  orders.  Only  .  .  . 
be  careful  .  .  .  and  I  shouldn't,  if  I  were  you,  go  too  often. 
Aren't  you  reading  anything?" 

"Yes,  there's  that  Conrad  you  lent  me." 

"Don't  you  like  it?" 

"Oh,  yes — but  it's  so  tiring.    I  can't  follow  it." 

Roberta  did  not  find  it  easy  to  read  Conrad.  She  had  come 
up  rather  too  sharply  against  Marlow,  the  super-narrator  of 
the  earlier  Conrad — of  Lord  Jim  and  of  Youth,  and  had 
stumbled  badly  over  Chance.  Even  Allan  had  admitted  that 
only  Conrad  could  have  got  that  story  out  through  the  twisting 
maze  of  the  method  he  had  there  adopted. 

The  conversation  slipped  down  the  by-path  of  Roberta's 
reading-matter,  and  that  young  woman  congratulated  herself 
upon  the  fact  that  Allan  had  forgotten  Mr.  Rayne's  existence. 
Half  an  hour  later,  however,  he  remembered  it.  Roberta  stood 
brushing  out  her  hair,  Allan  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  bed,  kicking 
off  his  boots.  He  was  essentially  the  sort  of  person  who  sat 
on  beds,  constitutionally  incapable  of  acknowledging  the  exist- 
ence of  bedroom  chairs. 

"You  don't,  by  any  chance,  meet  that  young  Rayne  at  Miss 
Carew's,  do  you?"  he  asked. 

Roberta  brushed  her  hair  over  her  face  and  answered  with 
studied  carelessness. 

"I  believe  he  was  there  to-night,"  she  said. 

"Don't  you  know?" 

"Well,  I  hardly  spoke  to  him." 

Allan's  face  clouded. 


1 82  INTRUSION 

"Why  quibble?  Why  couldn't  you  say  right  out,  at  first, 
that  he  was  there?" 

"Well,  if  I  didn't  speak  to  him " 

"I  didn't  ask  you  that.  ...  I  asked  you  if  you  met  him." 
Hopelessness  assailed  him,  took  and  shook  him  by  the  throat. 
"My  dear  girl,"  he  said,  "can't  you  see  how  awful  it's  going 
to  be  if  I  can't — trust  you?" 

She  said: 

"Well,  it's  only  a  white  lie  ...  and  a  weeny  one.    Sorry.  .  ." 

"Not  even  white  lies,  Bobbie,  please.  Good  heavens,  where 
are  we  if  we  can't  tell  the  truth  to  each  other?  Can't  you  see 
how  important  it  is?"  And  again  hopelessness  assailed  him 
because  he  felt  she  couldn't. 

But  Roberta  said  she  could. 

"Allan  .  .  .  don't  lecture  me.  ...  I  do  hate  being  lectured." 

"I  don't  want  to  lecture  you." 

"Then  don't.     Be  nice." 

She  brushed  her  hair  back  from  her  face  and  came  and 
leaned  over  the  rail  of  the  bed. 

"Why  do  you  hate  poor  Mr.  Rayne  so  much?"  she  enquired. 

"Because  he's  got  'bounder'  written  all  over  him.  I  don't 
want  you  to  know  bounders,  Bobbie." 

"But  I  don't  believe  he  is  ...  not  really,  darling." 

"You're  an  extraordinary  girl.  You  ought  to  be  able  at  a 
glance  to  see  what  he  is.  Where's  your  instinct?" 

"Oh,  that's  so  silly.  .  .  .  Even  if  there  were  anything  .  .  . 
anything  .  .  .  not  nice  .  .  .  about  him.  After  all,  men  always 
take  their  cue  from  the  girl." 

"But  it's  never  worth  risking  that  sort  of  thing.  It's  hateful. 
I  can't  bear  the  thought  of  your  knowing  questionable  men. 
Besides,  it  isn't  necessary." 

"Well,  how's  one  to  tell?  Most  men  are  the  same,  on  top. 
There  was  Martyn:  you  didn't  think  he  was  questionable,  yet 
he  wanted  to  make  love  to  me.  .  .  .  And  there  was  your  brother. 
Everybody  thought  he  was  all  right.  Pen  and  your  mother 
think  so  now." 

"I  know.     Don't  let  us  talk  of  that.  .  .  ." 

A  shadow  moved  across  his  face:  his  level  brows  drew 
together. 

"Well,  you  see,"  said  Roberta.  "Besides,  Allan  musn't  be  a 
naughty  horrid  birdlet  and  be  jealous  of  his  nice  little  wife." 


INTRUSION  183 

Allan  looked  up  at  her.  The  cloud  moved  across  his  face 
and  disappeared  like  a  shadow  before  the  sudden  shining  of  the 
sun.  He  smiled. 

"Not  jealous,"  he  said,  catching  her  mood. 

Through  her  thin  ridiculous  night-dress  the  grace  and  beauty 
of  her  burned  and  scorched  him.  Her  hazel  eyes,  like  two 
Veiled  servants,  guarded  and  shrouded  the  cool  calculation 
which  rose  up  and  looked  out  of  them.  Coquettishly  she 
touched  Allan's  shoulder  with  the  edge  of  the  silver-backed 
brush  she  never  had  time  to  polish. 

"Don't  like  living  in  a  cage,"  she  said.  "Birdlets  ought  to 
trust  each  other." 

"This  birdlet  does." 

"What's  the  matter  then?" 

"Nothing.  .  .  .  Come  and  kiss  me,  Bobbie." 

She  came  slowly  and  sat  on  his  knee,  putting  her  face  against 
his.  He  put  his  arms  about  her  and  held  her  tight.  With  the 
calm  resolute  abandon  of  dispassion  she  yielded  herself  to  his 
embrace.  Her  eyes  closed  in  an  ecstasy  of  distaste  and  a  little 
quiver  of  self-pity  ran  through  her,  not  that  she  gave  herself 
in  cold  blood,  but  that  she  must  give  herself  at  all. 


CHAPTER    SEVEN 


ALLAN,  with  Roberta's  kisses  to  brace  him,  bent  himself 
anew  to  this  task  of  moulding  or  remoulding  the  giver 
of  them.  He  went  warily,  realising  that  though  he 
hated  and  distrusted  this  friendship  of  Roberta's  with  the 
Invertebrates  (which  was  his  name  for  Tommy  Carew  and  her 
friends),  he  must  not  put  himself  out  of  court  by  forbidding 
it.  You  wouldn't  get  far  that  way  with  Roberta,  who  had  all 
the  obstinacy  of  weak  natures,  all  the  jargon  of  liberty  and 
freedom  of  those  who  never  come  within  a  hundred  miles  of 
understanding  the  meaning  of  either.  Her  acquaintance  with 
the  Invertebrates,  so  Allan  calculated,  would  come  to  an  end 
with  his  own  late  work,  either  at  Christmas  or  ever  so  little 
beyond  it.  And  seeing  that  it  was  now  the  middle  of  the  first 
week  in  December  it  certainly  looked  as  if  the  Invertebrates 
would  have  but  little  time  to  mar  his  beautiful  attempts  to 
achieve  for  Roberta  a  really  crystal  soul. 

He  had  just  settled  down  to  this  comfortable  conviction  when 
something  else  happened  which  revealed  to  him  how  unques- 
tionably muddy  was  the  material  upon  which  he  had  to  work. 

It  was  in  the  tube,  and  his  gaze  alighted  suddenly  upon  three 
studies  of  Roberta  in  Hilmer  Roydon's  advertisement  frames. 
In  a  way  he  had  grown  used  to  seeing  Roberta's  face  staring 
out  at  him  in  this  public  fashion,  but  it  was  now  so  long  since 
it  had  done  so  that  he  crossed  the  lift  to  look  particularly  at 
these  new  studies.  There  was  a  study  of  Roberta  in  Japanese 
costume;  another  in  a  garden  and  another  in  very  little  at  all. 
And,  strangely  enough,  though  it  was  the  last  which  first  caught 
Allan's  eye  (as  it  probably  caught  other  people's),  it  was  at  the 
one  in  Japanese  costume  that  he  found  himself  staring.  For  it 
was  that  which  gave  the  truth  away.  These  studies  were  new. 
Roberta  had  "sat"  for  them  recently.  He  knew  that  beyond 

184 


INTRUSION  185 

doubt  because  the  Japanese  costume  was  fastened  with  a  brooch 
which  he  had  given  Roberta  less  than  a  month  ago.  She  had 
seen  and  admired  it  in  some  shop  window,  and  his  pleasure  in, 
Roberta's  improved  taste  had  triumphed  over  his  conviction 
of  extravagance  when  he  went  inside  and  bought  it  for  her. 
Even  in  this  colourless  photographic  reproduction  that  single 
emerald  set  in  its  thin  ring  of  platinum  was  as  familiar  as  the 
nose  on  his  face.  He  became  suddenly  very  angry.  He  walked 
up  from  the  station  at  a  breakneck  pace  and  let  himself  into 
the  house.  It  was  Roberta's  birthday,  and  he  had  left  the  office 
early  in  order  to  take  her  out  to  dinner  and  to  a  theatre,  for 
which  he  had  secured  Dress  Circle  tickets.  She  was  upstairs 
dressing,  and  as  he  let  himself  into  the  house  her  gay  voice 
called  down  that  she  was  nearly  ready  and  that  he  was  to  go 
up.  He  would  have  gone  up  to-night  in  any  case;  for  he  was 
too  angry  to  cool  his  heels  down  there  in  the  hall.  Roberta 
had  put  on  her  prettiest  frock  and  stood  in  front  of  her  glass 
putting  the  finishing  touches  to  her  hair. 

"Hallo!"  she  said.     "You're  nice  and  early Will  I  do?" 

She  turned  and  waited  for  him  to  come  up  and  kiss  her.  He 
did  nothing  of  the  sort.  The  anger  in  his  face  looked  out  at 
her,  killing  her  smile  and  checking  the  words  on  her  lips. 

"Roberta,  why  didn't  you  tell  me  you  had  given  Roy  don  a 
new  sitting?" 

"Roydon?  A  new  sitting?  Whatever  do  you  mean?"  said 
Roberta.  Her  voice  had  the  pathetic  inflection  of  the  unjustly 
accused;  she  looked  injured  and  very  pretty.  But  that  didn't 
help  her,  because,  for  the  moment,  Allan  was  beyond  the 
appeal  of  the  physical. 

"You  know  quite  well  what  I  mean,"  he  said.  "Roydon  is 
showing  three  new  photographs  of  you,  and  I  want  to  know 
when  they  were  taken." 

He  hated  himself  for  laying  the  trap,  but  it  had  to  be.  There 
was  nothing  big  or  fine  about  him  and  nothing  generous.  He 
was  male  to  his  finger-tips,  blatant,  rampart  male,  with  all  the 
cave-dweller's  instinct  to  hurt  the  woman  who  had  deceived 
him.  He  wanted,  savagely,  to  humiliate  her,  here  in  the  midst 
of  her  finery,  and  to  spoil  her  evening's  treat.  Roberta,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  concerned  less  with  Allan's  anger  (with  which 
she  thought  she  could  cope)  than  with  Hilmer  Roydon's 
duplicity  (with  which  she  was  aware  she  couldn't).  He  had 


1 86  INTRUSION 

expressly  told  her  that  the  photographs  should  be  used  not  for 
publicity,  but  for  exhibition  purposes. 

"When,"  said  Allan  again,  "were  those  photographs  taken?" 

"Oh,  months  ago.  .  .  .  What  a  fuss  to  make  over  a  few 
photographs!" 

Allan  came  nearer. 

"Now  be  careful,  Roberta.  When  were  those  photographs 
taken?" 

"Months  ago,  I  tell  you." 

She  saw  from  the  whitening  of  his  face  that  he  was  very 
angry. 

"How  many  months?" 

"How  can  I  remember?     Before  we  were  married,  anyway." 

"All  of  them?    What  about  the  one  in  Japanese  costume?" 

"Oh!"  She  laughed.  "I  didn't  think  it  was  that  one  you'd 
make  a  fuss  about." 

Something,  not  alone  the  thing  she  said,  but  the  coarse  note 
in  her  voice  as  she  said  it,  jerked  his  mind  painfully  back  to 
things  he  thought  he  had  forgotten — once  again  he  held  her 
for  the  first  time  in  his  arms,  felt  her  suddenly  grow  limp  at 
his  touch.  Beneath  the  veneer  of  her  beauty  she  was 
common.  .  .  . 

"I'm  not  making  a  'fuss'  about  any  of  them.  I'm  asking 
you  a  plain  question.  When  was  that  study  in  Japanese 
costume  taken?" 

"With  the  others,  of  course  .  .  .  months  ago." 

"Before  we  were  married?" 

"I've  said  so,  haven't  I?" 

"You  have.    I  give  you  one  more  chance  to  take  it  back." 

"Take  it  back?  Of  course  I  shan't  take  it  back.  Why 
should  I?" 

He  was  very  quiet. 

"You  still  stick  to  it  that  the  Japanese  one  was  taken  months 
ago?" 

"Of  course  I  stick  to  it.     Do  you  think  I'm  a  liar?" 

"I  think  you're  lying  now.  Because  you  seem  to  have  for- 
gotten that  the  brooch  that  fastens  the  Japanese  frock  is  the 
brooch  I  bought  you  less  than  a  month  ago." 

Her  face  fell:  a  look  half  fear,  half  cunning,  crept  into  her 
eyes.  Then  she  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  turned  away. 

"Well?     What  have  you  to  say?"  he  asked. 


INTRUSION  187 

"Nothing,"  she  said. 

"Nothing  at  all?" 

He  came  over  and  touched  her  arm. 

"Roberta,  you  told  me  a  deliberate  lie.     Was  it  necessary?" 

She  pulled  herself  away  from  his  hand. 

"Oh,  don't  touch  me!  You  make  me  sick.  You've  got  a 
filthy  mind,  you  have.  ...  I  detest  you !" 

"Why  didn't  you  tell  me  you  were  going  to  Roydon's  studio?" 

"Because  I  knew  you'd  object.  ...  I  did  ask  you  .  .  . 
twice  before.  .  .  .  You  didn't  like  it.  You  object  to  so  many 
things!" 

"Do  I,  Roberta?" 

"Oh,  don't  talk  to  me.  ...  I'm  sick  of  it,  I  tell  you.  .  .  . 
Such  a  fuss  .  .  .  about  a  little  white  lie!  ...  While  we're 
about  it,  you  may  as  well  know  something  else  as  well.  Mr. 
Rayne's  given  me  the  chance  of  getting  a  photograph  contract 
with  some  firm  or  other  in  America.  If  you  hadn't  made  all 
that  fuss  about  my  sitting  for  Roydon  I'd  have  told  you  all 
about  it;  but  I  can't  stand  arguments  and  rows.  It's  your 
own  fault  and,  anyway,  you  can't  say  I  haven't  told  you  about 
this  new  offer.  It  isn't  a  job  you  see  advertised.  It's  all  a 
matter  of  influence." 

"I  see.     Mr.  Rayne's  influence?" 

"Yes." 

"And  why  should  Mr.  Rayne  take  so  much  interest  in  you?" 

"Oh,  Lord,  do  shut  up!  You  make  me  tired.  I  call  it  jolly 
decent  of  him.  And  why  shouldn't  I  earn  a  little  for  myself? 
It  isn't  as  though  you're  rolling — not  exactly." 

Allan  stood  like  stone.  It  seemed  to  him  that  whole  cen- 
turies passed  before  he  got  out  what  he  wanted  to  say. 

"I  want  to  know  what  Mr.  Rayne  is  getting  out  of  it." 

"Getting  out  of  it?"  Roberta  withered  him  with  scorn. 
"Getting  out  of  it?  What  should  he  get  out  of  it?  What  on 
earth  do  you  mean?" 

Through  the  thin  frock  he  saw  her  bosom  rise  and  fall  in 
her  anger:  her  eyes  darkened  with  it  and  her  face  flushed.  Even 
in  her  fury  her  beauty  put  out  fingers  and  touched  him.  He 
clenched  his  hands  and  looked  away.  If  he  looked  at  her, 
even  now,  he  was  lost. 

"You  know  well  enough  what  I  mean." 

She  stared  at  him.    The  flush  had  died  out  of  her  face;  her 


1 88  INTRUSION 

eyes  lashed  him  like  cold  steel.  It  was  as  though  she  measured 
him  up,  delivered  judgment;  but  with  a  low,  insolent  satis- 
faction, infinitely  galling. 

"You've  got  a  nice  sort  of  mind,  I  must  say!" 

Standing  there  by  the  window,  he  was  deadly  quiet.  What 
she  said  didn't  matter:  but  that  she  said  it  in  that  cold, 
passionless  tone  hurt  hideously.  He  couldn't  think  why. 

"If  I  thought  things  like  that  I'd  keep  them  to  myself.  It 
shows  what  you  must  be  yourself.  .  .  .  Besides,  do  you  think 
being  married  to  you  isn't  enough?  I  give  you  my  word  it 
is.  .  .  ." 

He  hated  her  in  the  sudden  furious  way  he  hated  people 
who  spat  on  the  public  highway. 

"Oh,  for  God's  sake!"  he  said  and,  turning  on  his  heel, 
went  out  of  the  room. 


Downstairs,  in  the  front  room  they  called  the  dining-room, 
the  fire  was  at  its  last  gasp.  Allan  went  over  to  it,  leaned 
his  arms  on  the  mantelshelf  and  bowed  his  head  on  them.  He 
stayed  so  for  several  minutes,  and  when  he  moved  the  sleeves 
of  his  coat  were  grey  with  dust.  He  brushed  it  off  mechani- 
cally, as  though  he  scarcely  saw  it,  as  though  in  this 
hideous  clarity  of  vision  which  had  come  to  him  he  saw  so 
many  other  things,  so  much  more  important.  It  was  as  though 
upstairs  he  had  looked  down  over  the  edge  of  Roberta's  beauty 
and  found  nothing  there.  And  even  the  beauty  somehow  had 
coarsened  and  cheapened.  He  remembered  things  that  had 
happened,  that  he  did  not  know  had  worked  like  that  into  his 
memory,  as  though  they  had  been  written  in  invisible  ink  and 
Roberta's  dull  scorn  had  been  the  acid  which  made  the  writing 
visible. 

The  door  opened  and  she  came  in,  switching  on  the  light. 
She  had  slipped  her  coat  over  her  thin  frock,  and  her  face  rose, 
flushed  and  charming,  over  its  black  fur  collar.  The  red-gold 
of  her  hair  escaped  beneath  a  brimless  hat  of  black  tulle  that 
was  bound  with  a  wreath  of  green  leaves. 

"I'm  ready,"  she  said,  "if  you  are." 

The  honey  sweetness  of  her  tone,  the  soft  amiability  of  her 


INTRUSION  189 

face — both  were  incredible.  He  stared  at  her,  then,  stammer- 
ing a  little,  he  said,  "I'm  not  .  .  .  I'm  not  going." 

"Don't  be  silly!"  she  said.  "I'm  sorry  I  lost  my  temper, 
but  you  were  very  aggravating." 

"You  told  me  a  lie.  .  .  .  You  deceived  me !  Not  for  the  first 
time.  .  .  .  You're  making  it  impossible  for  me  to  trust  you  any 
more!" 

"Oh,  if  you're  going  to  begin  all  over  again.  .  .  ." 

"I'm  not.  But  we  can't  go  out  .  .  .  now.  .  .  .  You  must 
see  we  can't.  They'd  turn  us  out  in  five  minutes  for  brawling." 

The  amiability  of  her  face  cracked,  like  a  mask. 

"You  mean  you  refuse?  You'll  deliberately  spoil  my 
evening?" 

"It  isn't  I  who've  spoilt  it." 

"Who  is  it,  then?  I'm  never  to  have  any  pleasure,  I  sup- 
pose? I'm  just  to  stick  here  in  this  poky  place  and  slave  for 
you — for  nothing." 

He  remembered  the  dust  on  his  coat. 

"You  don't  slave  very  hard,"  he  said.  "You  haven't  even 
dusted^the  mantelshelf  to-day." 

"I  suppose  you  think  you're  very  clever?"  she  said.  Her 
voice  was  not  angry,  but  quite  sweet  and  seductive.  She  smiled 
and  came  closer,  so  that  he  saw  the  fine,  the  almost  incredibly 
fine,  texture  of  her  skin  and  its  flawless  transparency.  Beneath 
the  open  coat  and  the  thin  frock  her  body  stirred:  she  held 
his  eyes  with  her  own. 

"I  don't  think  I'm  clever  at  all,"  he  said  slowly;  "but  I 
think  you  are." 

Her  smile  deepened. 

"Then  be  nice  to  me.  .  .  .  I'm  sorry  I  was  a  beast." 

She  leaned  towards  him,  her  eyes  narrowed  and  shining. 
The  scent  she  affected  sprang  out  at  him,  faint  but  enticing. 
Her  hand  touched  his  shoulder. 

"Allan  ...  be  nice.  .  .  ." 

Allan  stood  rigid,  but  his  eyelids  flickered.  Something  fierce 
and  hot  flowed  over  him  like  lava,  then  suddenly  streamed  back 
from  him,  leaving  him  strangely  calm  and  still.  It  was  his 
calmness  which  astounded  him.  It  was  a  thing  so  real,  so 
intense,  it  seemed  almost  to  be  imbued  with  visibility.  He 
looked  into  its  eyes  with  his  own,  and  those  of  Roberta,  nar- 
rowed, shining,  infinitely  alluring,  he  no  longer  saw  at  alL 


190  INTRUSION 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  said;  "but  I'm  not  coming." 

"You  mean  that?" 

"Absolutely." 

She  swung  round  and  began  buttoning  up  her  coat. 

"Very  well!"  she  said,  "as  you  please.  Only— don't  say  I 
haven't  apologised.  ...  It  isn't  my  fault" 

He  said  nothing.  He  looked  at  her,  but  even  now  the  only 
thing  he  saw  was  the  startling  phenomenon  of  his  own  intense 
unbelievable  calm.  But  over  ft,  as  Roberta  turned  and  went 
out  and  the  closing  of  the  front  door  reached  his  ears,  there 
came,  flooding,  a  sense  of  triumph.  It  had  been  a  fight. 
Against  Roberta  and  the  maddening  quality  of  her  beauty  and 
her  intention  that  he  should  succumb.  And  he  had  won.  It 
was  his  first  victory,  and  it  elated  him. 

He  was  full  of  it  as  he  made  up  the  fire,  drew  up  a  chair  to 
the  table,  collected  his  materials  and  sat  down  to  write.  He 
was  surprised  at  the  perspicacity  of  his  mind,  at  its  cool 
deliberate  concentration:  at  the  ease  with  which  he  marshalled 
his  ideas  and  set  them  down  in  writing  before  him.  He 
worked  on  steadily  until  the  clock  on  the  mantelshelf  struck 
eleven  with  the  sharp  triumph  of  its  kind.  Allan's  mind,  jerked 
out  of  its  avenue  of  tranquillity,  shifted  uneasily  from  thought 
to  thought,  then  recoiled  in  dismay.  Where  and  with  whom 
was  Roberta?  At  a  quarter  past  the  hour  she  returned.  He 
heard  her  key  in  the  lock  and  the  sound  of  her  footsteps  going 
on  up  the  stairs.  Stifling  an  instinct  to  rush  out  after  her, 
Allan  sat  there  and  finished  his  article.  At  twelve  o'clock,  when 
he  wrote  the  last  word,  only  a  painful  throbbing  of  his  senses 
proclaimed  at  how  great  a  cost  the  victory  had  been  won  and 
where  it  was  incomplete;  that  and  the  barb  of  wretchedness 
when  his  eyes  fell  upon  the  blankness  of  his  undisturbed  bed. 

For  Roberta,  majestic,  offended,  had  elected  to  sleep  in  the 
spare  room. 


The  amiability  of  her  manner  next  morning  was  not  more 
surprising  than  the  sullen  sweetness  of  it.  It  seemed  impossible 
that  the  two  things  could  go  together  like  that,  or  that  she 
could  keep  them  united  for  so  long.  She  answered  his  morning 


INTRUSION  191 

greeting  in  a  tone  several  degrees  more  affable  than  his  and 
made  intelligent  remarks  about  the  weather,  which,  here  in  the 
second  week  of  December,  was  making  commendable  efforts  to 
emerge  from  wet  warmth  into  bright,  windy  coldness.  Allan, 
in  no  mood  for  conversation,  read  the  morning  paper  and 
thought  how  delightful  a  world  without  newspapers  would  be 
and  that  John  Wilkes,  after  all,  had  gone  to  prison  for  very 
little.  .  .  . 

Suddenly  he  put  the  paper  down  and  plunged. 

"It  would  be  interesting,"  he  said,  "to  know  who  had  the 
privilege  of  paying  for  your  dinner  last  night." 

Roberta  smiled.  "I  shouldn't  worry  if  I  were  you,"  she 
said.  "He  could  well  afford  it." 

Allan  got  up  out  of  his  chair,  pushed  it  back  and  stood  lean- 
ing over  the  table,  gripping  its  edge  with  his  hands. 

"So  it  was  Rayne,  was  it?" 

Roberta  stirred  her  tea,  but  did  not  look  at  him. 

"Well,  it  was  your  own  fault.  I  had  to  have  some  dinner, 
anyway;  and  I'd  promised  to  let  Mr.  Rayne  have  an  answer 
about  his  offer,  which,  by  the  way,  I've  accepted." 

"Am  I  to  understand  that  you  went  and  gave  it  him  in 
person?" 

"Oh,  it  was  quite  proper!  I  knew  Tommy  was  going  to 
be  there.  .  .  .  We  all  had  dinner  in  Soho.  After  that  we  went 
back  to  Mr.  Rayne's  studio  and  I  had  three  photographs  taken. 
That  was  quite  proper,  too.  Tommy  was  there  all  the  time. 
I've  arranged  for  the  proofs  to  be  sent  to  you.  ...  So  you  see 
you're  really  making  a  lot  of  fuss  about  nothing,  aren't  you?" 

Allan  let  go  of  the  table,  pushed  the  chair  up  against  it  and 
stood  clear. 

"Is  that  another  lie?"  he  asked. 

"No,  it  isn't.    It's  the  truth." 

"You  give  me  your  word  of  honour  that  Miss  Carew  was 
there  all  the  evening?" 

"Of  course  she  was.  Really,  you  know,  Allan,  you  haven't 
got  a  very  nice  mind." 

"Oh,  damn  my  mind!"  said  Allan,  and  lighted  a  cigarette. 

Roberta  laughed. 

"Don't  you  think  you  ought  to  apologise?"  she  asked. 

"What  for?     My  mind?" 

"Well,  yes." 


192  INTRUSION 

"Then  I'm  not  going  to." 

"You  ought  to  do  something  with  it,  you  know.  It  wants 
sterilising." 

She  laughed  again  and  followed  him  out  into  the  hall,  watch- 
ing him  get  into  his  coat  and  collect  his  hat  and  stick.  When 
he  was  ready  she  opened  the  front  door  and  stood  there,  raising 
her  face  as  if  she  expected  him  to  kiss  her.  From  the  house 
opposite  a  middle-aged  man  let  himself  out  into  the  street  and 
smiled  across  at  Roberta,  raising  his  hat.  Roberta  was  always 
charming  to  her  neighbours. 

Allan  bent  and  kissed  her  cheek. 

"Good  morning,"  he  said,  and  went. 

"Good  morning"  was  the  sign  and  symbol  of  Allan's  dis- 
pleasure. Its  formal  politeness  was  meant  to  rebuke  the  easy 
assumption  of  her  casual  "good-bye";  but,  somehow,  when 
the  hall  door  was  shut  it  made  Roberta  laugh.  She  went  back 
into  the  breakfast-room  and  began  piling  the  crockery  on  a 
tray,  until  she  remembered  and  stopped.  For  this  was  Mrs. 
Noakes's  day:  Mrs.  Noakes,  this  morning,  would  deal  with  the 
aftermath  of  breakfast.  She  would  also  polish  the  grates,  get 
rid  of  the  dust  and  make  the  bed.  Roberta  put  it  in  the  singu- 
lar like  that  because  Roberta  intended  to  make  the  bed  in  the 
spare  room  herself.  Otherwise  Mrs.  Noakes  might  wonder :  and 
it  wasn't  good  that  Mrs.  Noakes  should  do  anything  of  the  sort. 
The  placid  waters  of  Mrs.  Noakes's  respectable  soul  must  not 
be  disturbed:  she  was  obviously  one  of  those  people  who 
believed  that  in  all  happy  marriages  husbands  and  wives  slept 
together.  It  was  an  arrangement,  Roberta  thought,  which  had 
drawbacks,  but  she  did  not  feel  equal  to  explaining  what  they 
were  to  Mrs.  Noakes.  It  was  a  good  deal  easier  to  make  that 
single  bed  herself. 

She  went  upstairs  to  do  it  and  she  did  it  very  badly.  Its 
amazing  badness  struck  even  Roberta. 

"Oh,  well,"  she  said  to  herself,  "I  shouldn't  get  a  prize  for 
bed-making,  anyhow.  And  I'm  sure  I  don't  want  to." 

In  the  front  bedroom,  where  Allan  had  slept,  the  bed  was 
unstripped  and  the  curtains  still  drawn  against  the  morning. 
Roberta  rectified  matters  with  some  show  of  impatience,  her 
thoughts  running  on  the  ways  of  a  man  with  a  house. 

"Lazy  beasts!"  she  said,  and  eyed  herself  critically  in  the 
glass. 


INTRUSION  193 

"Well,  it's  time  I  got  some  money  somehow,"  she  reflected, 
"if  this  is  the  best  costume  I've  got." 

It  was.  She  brushed  it  anew,  pulled  on  the  tulle  hat  (which 
did  not  "go"  with  the  costume)  and  ran  downstairs,  wrote  a 
note  for  Mrs.  Noakes  (which  told  her  there  was  cold  ham  and 
rice  pudding  for  lunch),  left  the  key  of  the  kitchen  door  in  its 
customary  place  and  took  herself  off. 

Mrs.  Noakes's  reflections  upon  reading  Roberta's  note  and 
looking  at  Roberta's  house  were,  perhaps,  not  entirely  unin- 
fluenced by  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Noakes  was  not  partial  to  cold 
ham  and  warmed-up  rice  pudding.  But  the  germ  of  truth 
was  in  those  reflections,  all  the  same.  They  approximated  to 
those  of  Roberta  herself  when  she  had  thrown  open  Allan's  bed 
and  pulled  back  the  window  curtains;  but  they  were  not  half 
so  printable. 

Not  that  Roberta  would  have  cared.  She  was  going  over  to 
Highgate  to  see  her  mother,  who  had  a  cold,  and  whom  she 
would  leave  in  good  time  for  her  lunching  appointment  with 
Douglas  Rayne.  He  was  bringing  with  him,  not  Tommy  Carew, 
who  said  she  had  something  a  good  deal  more  exciting  to  do, 
but  the  proofs  of  last  night's  photographs.  There  were  two 
that  must  not  be  sent  to  Allan,  but  she  wanted  to  see  them. 
Not  that  there  was  anything  wrong  with  the  photographs,  of 
course,  only  Allan  wouldn't  be  likely  to  understand  how  a 
glimpse  of  a  rounded  shoulder  could  improve  a  photograph ;  but 
no  one  could  say  Mr.  Rayne  hadn't  behaved  like  a  gentleman. 
Allan  would  have  to  get  used  to  it.  Why,  there  were  girls  who 
sat  for  the  .  .  .  altogether.  Quite  nice  girls,  too.  Roberta  had 
met  some  of  them  at  Tommy's  "affairs."  Allan  was  a  Puritan 
and  therefore  always  imagined  the  worst.  It  was  so  silly  of 
him,  because  he  ought  to  know  by  now  'that  she  wasn't  that 
sort. 

She  smiled,  partly  at  her  thought  and  partly  at  the  conductor 
who  stood  at  her  side  and  demanded  fares. 

"Haighgate,  please,"  said  Roberta. 

The  "a"  slipped  in  unnoticed,  as  it  always  did  when  Roberta 
was  excited. 


194  INTRUSION 


Roberta  found  her  mother  in  bed  with  a  hot-water  bottle 
and  a  temperature.  She  followed  the  woman  from  upstairs 
(who  had  let  her  in)  into  the  kitchen,  and  stood  watching  her 
as  she  mixed  bovril  in  a  cup  and  said  that  Roberta's  mother 
was  "pretty  bad."  Mrs.  Miller  had  not  liked  Roberta  as 
Roberta  Leigh,  and  did  not  give  any  indication  of  liking  her 
any  better  now  that  she  was  Roberta  Suffield.  She  looked  at 
the  dark  blue  costume  Roberta  had  despised  and  at  the  little 
hat  which  didn't  belong  to  it,  and  she  sniffed. 

"You've  not  come  to  work,  seemingly,"  she  said.  "Your 
mother  ought  to  see  a  doctor." 

"Why  doesn't  she,  then?" 

"Can't  abear  them,  she  says.  But  I  don't  like  the  looks 
of  her." 

"I'll  call  on  Dr.  Young  as  I  go  back,"  Roberta  said.  "But 
I  expect  she'll  be  all  right  if  she  stays  in  bed." 

The  woman  from  upstairs  sniffed  again,  with  more  decision, 
perhaps,  but  no  more  delicately.  Sniffing,  Roberta  reflected, 
wrinkling  her  nose  in  disgust,  was  not  at  all  a  pretty  habit. 

"Mrs.  Miller  thinks  you  ought  to  see  a  doctor,"  she  said  to 
her  mother,  taking  a  seat  at  the  bedside  and  sticking  out  her 
feet  because  she  liked  to  look  at  them. 

"Does  she?"  said  Mrs.  Leigh  in  a  hoarse  whisper.  "Well, 
Mrs.  Miller  can  go  on  thinking  so  if  she  likes." 

"But  it's  so  silly,"  Roberta  said.  "If  you're  ill  you  ought 
to  see  a  doctor.  Anybody'd  think  you  were  a  Particular  Baptist 
or  a  Peculiar  Brethren  or  something." 

"I'm  particular  enough,  thank  you,"  said  Mrs.  Leigh,  "and 
I'm  peculiar  enough  to  stop  at  home  and  do  my  own  work 
instead  of  gallivanting  out  in  the  morning." 

"I'm  not  gallivanting,"  Roberta  said.  "I've  got  an  appoint- 
ment." 

"Appointment!     What  sort  of  an  appointment?" 

"I've  got  to  see  some  photograph  proofs  ...  if  they're  not 
good  I'll  have  to  sit  again.  If  they  are  111  give  you  one." 

"You  needn't  trouble.  The  house  is  littered  up  with  your 
photographs  as  it  is." 

"You  can't  be  very  ill,  you  know,"  said  Roberta,  "because 
you're  so  disagreeable." 


INTRUSION  195 

"May  be,"  wheezed  her  mother.  "Who's  taking  these 
photographs?" 

"A  friend  of  Tommy's.  He's  an  art  photographer  and  his 
people  are  tobacconists  or  cigarette-makers  or  something.  He's 
trying  to  get  me  a  contract  for  the  lids  of  boxes  and  advertise- 
ments. It  may  mean  a  hundred  a  year  to  me." 

"What's  this  young  man  taking  so  much  interest  in  you 
for?" 

"Well,  he's  a  photographer  himself  .  .  .  it's  his  business. 
I  s'pose  he'll  get  a  commission.  I'm  sure  I  don't  know.  Any- 
way, it's  a  nice  friendly  act." 

"I'm  sure  it  is,"  croaked  Mrs.  Leigh,  and  was  interrupted 
by  a  hideous  fit  of  coughing,  in  the  middle  of  which  Mrs. 
Miller  came  up  with  the  bovril  and  stood  at  the  bedside 
sniffing  with  devastating  regularity. 

"You'd  better  drink  this,"  she  said  when  the  fit  subsided, 
"yer  pore  chest  sounds  quite  raw." 

"It  feels  it,"  said  Mrs.  Leigh. 

"Look  here,  Mrs.  Leigh,"  said  the  woman  from  upstairs, 
"you'd  best  see  a  doctor,  if  you  asks  me." 

"I  haven't,"  snapped  Mrs.  Leigh,  who  had  her  own  reasons 
for  disliking  the  woman  from  upstairs  and  detested  being 
under  an  obligation  to  her. 

"Well,  I'm  only  speaking  for  yer  good.  .  .  .  With  a  cold  on 
yer  chest  like  that  it  ain't  reasonable  not  to  see  a  doctor." 

"Then  I'll  be  wnreasonable,"  said  Mrs.  Leigh,  and  worked 
hard  at  swallowing  the  bovril. 

"Really,  mother,  you're  ridiculous,"  Roberta  said.  "I'm 
going  to  call  on  Dr.  Young  as  I  go  along:  so  we  needn't  argue 
about  it  any  more."  She  rose  to  go. 

"Well,  if  he  comes  I  shan't  see  him,  so  that's  flat." 

"Oh,  nonsense,"  said  Roberta.  "I'll  look  in  to-morrow 
and  see  how  you  are.  Now  good-bye,  and  do  be  sensible. 
Father  can  look  after  himself  when  he  conies  in.  I  don't 
suppose  it'll  hurt  him  to  do  something  for  himself  for  once." 

She  kissed  her  mother,  picked  up  her  gloves  and  walked  to 
the  door.  Mrs.  Miller  followed  her,  sniffing.  She  sniffed  all 
the  way  along  to  the  front  door,  saying  nothing.  She  was  not  a 
woman  at  all:  she  had  become  the  personification  of  a  sniff. 

"Good-bye,"  said  Roberta. 

"Good  morning,"  said  Mrs.  Miller. 


196  INTRUSION 

It  was  the  second  time  that  morning  that  Roberta's  "Good- 
bye" had  been  so  qualified;  and  for  the  second  time  she 
laughed  as  though  she  found  it  amusing. 

Mrs.  Miller  shut  the  door  and  sniffed  herself  back  into  the 
kitchen.  She  hated  Roberta.  She  always  had  hated  her,  but 
she  hated  her  more  than  ever  now  because  she  had  found  some- 
body to  marry  her.  Mrs.  Miller  had  two  girls  of  her  own  and 
nobody,  so  far,  had  been  found  to  do  anything  of  the  sort  for 
them.  Good  .honest  girls,  too,  they  were,  that  would  make 
anybody  good  wives.  It  was  so  she  distinguished  them  from 
Roberta.  But  men  were  fools.  Pretty  faces  were  all  they 
thought  about. 

The  faces  of  the  Misses  Miller  were  not  pretty. 

Mrs.  Leigh  reiterated  her  intention  concerning  the  doctor 
many  times  before  his  arrival.  "I  won't  see  him,"  she  said 
obstinately:  but  she  did.  For  by  the  time  he  came  she  was 
beyond  protestations,  saving  all  her  energy  for  the  fight  with 
Death. 

"I  won't  die,"  she  said  to  Henry  Leigh,  as  he  sat,  speechless, 
at  her  side.  "I  won't  ...  I  won't." 

The  fight  was  long  and  difficult.  Martha  Leigh  did  not 
die  easily.  She  gave  Death  infinite  trouble;  but  for  all  that, 
at  five  o'clock  next  morning  Death  dragged  her,  protesting  and 
fighting  still,  out  into  the  dark.  She  lay  there,  at  the  last, 
very  quietly,  taking  the  rest  she  had  never  taken  in  life. 
Nothing  now  disturbed  her;  neither  her  doubts  of  Roberta  nor 
that  young  woman's  noisy  grief  when  she  came  later  and 
indulged  it.  It  was  as  if,  even  now,  she  still  saw  through 
Roberta;  understood  that  her  crying  was  not  really  painful  and 
that  she  would  know  the  exact  moment  at  which  to  stop.  And 
the  quiet  smiling  of  the  dead  face  seemed  to  say  that  here,  in 
Death,  a  sense  of  the  exquisite  humour  of  things  had  come  to 
her,  as  in  life  it  had  certainly  never  done. 


CHAPTER   EIGHT 


FOR  Allan  the  mask  of  Roberta's  tears  shut  out  a  multi- 
tude of  new  miseries  and  uncertainties.  Roberta  wept 
That,  for  Allan,  was  sufficient.  He  did  not  know,  as 
that  quiet  sleeper  knew,  that  Roberta  would  not  weep  too  much 
and  not  painfully.  He  knew  only  that  she  was  unhappy  and 
needed  comfort:  and  whilst  he  strove  to  give  it  her  the  breach 
between  them  drew  together  and  was  healed. 

Roberta's  grief  was  becoming,  perhaps  because  she  indulged 
it  wisely.  At  the  funeral  she  looked  as  pretty  in  her  black 
clothes  as  nearly  four  months  ago  she  had  looked  at  her  wed- 
ding. (Ridiculous  to  remember  they  had  been  married  no 
longer  than  that!)  Black  suited  Roberta,  if  possible,  better 
than  white  satin  and  orange  blossom,  and  on  the  whole  she 
was  grateful  to  her  mother,  if  not  for  dying,  at  least  for  dying 
at  such  a  convenient  time  of  the  year.  It  would,  as  she  observed 
to  Tommy  Carew,  have  been  "a  good  deal  worse  if  this  had 
happened  in  the  spring.  It  would  have  been  awful  to  have  had 
to  wear  black  just  when  the  weather  was  getting  warm." 

Allan,  however,  was  much  more  deeply  affected  by  the  death 
of  Roberta's  mother  than  he  understood  or  would  have  believed 
possible.  It  came  to  him  not  only  as  a  shock,  but  as  a  bewilder- 
ing example  of  the  dreadful  possibility  of  the  impossible.  You 
could  not  believe  that  the  energy  which  had  propelled  her 
through  fifty  odd  years  had  come  suddenly  to  an  end.  It 
struck  Allan  continually  as  ridiculous.  Even  in  church  before 
her  coffin  he  had  the  impression  that  at  any  moment  the  lid 
would  lift  and  she  would  rise  and  chide  them  all  for  sitting 
there  wasting  time.  For  weeks  he  had  at  intervals  a  funny 
insistent  picture  of  her  hurling  herself  through  Eternity,  as 
she  had  hurled  herself  through  Time.  .  .  . 

But  her  death,  whatever  else  it  did  or  did  not  do,  drew  Allan 

197 


198  INTRUSION 

and  Roberta  together  again.  The  wound,  for  Allan,  had  been 
deep,  but  the  skin  was  healthy  and  healed  quickly.  Hilmer 
Roydon's  photographs  were  not  mentioned  between  them,  and 
so  far  as  those  of  Mr.  Rayne  were  concerned  he  tried  to  believe 
that  he  didn't  really  mind  Roberta's  face  being  hawked  about 
in  America.  And  the  money  would  be  useful.  That  was  a 
contention  which  held  continually.  Bills  went  up  week  by 
week;  living  was  dearer — the  statements  of  politicians  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding — than  during  the  war  and  Roberta 
was  not  exactly  a  genius  at  housekeeping.  This  death  in  the 
family,  too,  had  been  an  expense:  there  had  been  new  clothes 
for  himself  and  for  Roberta,  and  the  cheque  Hilmer  Roydon 
had  sent  her  had  gone  nowhere.  Most  certainly  money  was 
useful:  you  could  always  "do"  with  it.  But  every  now  and 
then  there  swept  over  Allan  the  old  passion  of  distaste.  He 
grudged  the  amount  of  time  and  energy  that  went  to  the  pro- 
duction of  life's  wherewithal.  Capitalism  had  caught  him 
up  at  last  in  its  vast  machinery:  it  would  not  stop  nor  let 
him  rest,  and  there  were  times  when  he  couldn't  even  bear  to 
think  about  it.  He  saw  civilisation  as  nothing  but  a  vast 
dividend-paying  concern,  and  he  hated  it. 

"I  don't  see  what  you're  all  driving  at,"  John  Suffield, 
uneasy,  would  say.  "This  Bolshevist  blather  is  a  menace  to 
Society.  I'm  sorry  to  hear  a  son  of  mine  repeating  it." 

Allan  said  he  didn't  know  that  he  was;  but  that  the 
Bolshevists  had  discovered  one  thing,  anyway — that  if  a  man 
wouldn't  work  then  he  had  no  right  to  eat. 

"And  you'll  look  nice  under  Bolshevism,"  John  Suffield  said. 
"I  expect  they'd  make  you  a  scavenger." 

He  seemed  to  enjoy  the  idea  of  Allan  as  a  scavenger.  Allan 
enjoyed  it,  too.  "I  shouldn't  mind  scavenging,"  he  said,  "one 
little  bit  if  I  need  only  scavenge  from  eight  to  twelve.  It 
would  be  better  than  the  office  twelve  hours  a  day."  He  objected, 
he  said,  to  the  Comet  eating  into  all  his  day,  as  it  had  done 
for  so  many  weeks  past.  He  forgot  that  he  stayed  late  of  his 
own  free  will.  That,  somehow,  didn't  make  it  any  better.  The 
world's  work,  if  everybody  worked,  could  be  done,  he  said,  in 
half  the  time.  His  father  laughed. 

"Another  Utopia!"  he  said,  with  the  air  of  one  who  con- 
sidered all  such  schemes  optimistic  and  impossible  dreams.  As 
a  business  man  he  had  no  use  for  them. 


INTRUSION  199 

"It  isn't  the  world  you  want  to  alter,  but  human  nature," 
he  told  Allan.  "And  human  nature  doesn't  change." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,"  Allan  said.  Allan  had  been  to  the 
war  and  knew  that  it  did.  It  was  one  of  the  things  the  war  had 
taught  him — that  human  nature  was  continually  changing. 

But  John  Suffield  had  not  been  to  the  war  and  he  stuck  to 
his  belief  that  human  nature  was  the  one  unchangeable  reality. 
That  was  why  he  thought  war  would  go  on  for  ever  and  that 
all  Utopias  were  absurd.  His  power  of  resistance  to  all  ideas 
that  were  distasteful  or  disturbing  was  astounding:  he  could 
not  imagine  a  world  where  men  and  women  no  longer  acted 
from  tradition  or  from  habit.  Any  Utopia  of  which  he  might 
have  been  able  to  conceive  would  have  been  only  a  glorified 
earth,  where  things  went  on  as  to-day,  but  with  the  element 
of  suffering  somehow — and  miraculously — eliminated.  He  did 
not  want  people  to  be  unhappy  or  to  suffer.  But  Allan's  Utopia 
— if  he  had  framed  one — would  have  been  just  rather  than 
happy,  built  not  upon  a  common  inability  to  suffer,  but  upon 
a  standard  of  equality,  in  which  the  type  went  down  before  the 
individual.  And  change  was  the  essence  of  it.  But  John  Suf- 
field's  Utopia  would  never  have  changed.  It  would  have  had 
a  quality  of  hideous  permanence.  And  whenever  the  talk  ran 
to  this  subject  Allan  saw  that  world  hovering  between  them — 
that  static  world  that  his  father  loved — opposed  for  ever  to 
that  kinetic  world  of  progression  and  initiative  about  which 
his  own  thoughts  played  so  unceasingly. 

Roberta's  Utopia,  of  course,  had  nothing  in  common  with 
either  of  them:  she  conceived  it  only  as  a  place  where  money 
grew  plentifully  on  trees.  But  when  Allan  talked  like  this  of 
the  office  she  grew  worried,  because  she  remembered  it  was 
she  who  kept  him  there.  Not  that  he  ever  reminded  her  of 
that.  She  had  nothing  there  to  complain  of.  Nobody  more 
generous  than  Allan. 

But  this  heavy  toll  of  his  evenings  no  longer  left  her  dull. 
She  had  found  many  ways  during  the  last  month  of  combating 
that.  What  worried  her  now  about  Allan's  late  evenings  was 
not  that  they  had  begun  and  had  continued,  but  that  they 
couldn't  go  on  for  ever.  Even  Roberta  knew  that  some  day 
they  must  come  to  an  end. 

And  she  wondered  sometimes  what  she  would  do  when  they 
did. 


200  INTRUSION 


December  of  nineteen-nineteen  was  essentially  a  month 
which  reminded  you  of  the  old  joke  that  England  has  no 
climate  but  only  a  number  of  samples  of  weather,  and  Roberta, 
delicately  plaintive,  imagined  she  had  caught  a  cold.  Over 
the  Christmas  holidays,  and  much  to  Allan's  satisfaction,  she 
was  inclined  to  play  the  invalid,  and  in  this  new  mood  of  restful 
submission  Allan  found  her  enchanting.  He  plied  her  with 
tonic  wines  and  consideration,  and  felt  his  old  instinct  of  pro- 
tection blossom  anew  beneath  the  sun  of  her  rare  docility.  The 
things  to  which  he  was  hostile  were  buried  in  some  mysterious 
fashion  beneath  it;  he  saw  only  the  Roberta  of  the  red-gold 
hair,  the  hazel  eyes,  the  delicate  skin  and  exquisite  mouth.  He 
burned  with  eagerness  to  please  her.  It  was  absurd  and 
pathetic,  his  eagerness:  he  gave  himself  up  to  it  with  passion. 

And  then  Roberta  got  better,  or  grew  tired  of  the  role  of 
invalid.  At  any  rate,  her  lassitude  left  her  and  her  morning 
lack  of  appetite.  She  buoyed  herself  up  with  Allan's  cosseting 
and  his  wines,  and  clung,  as  to  a  raft,  to  his  suggestion  that  she 
had  suffered  profoundly  from  the  shock  of  her  mother's  death. 
But  in  her  heart  disquiet  had  already  entered. 

To  drown  it  she  turned  and  plunged  back  into  the  centre 
of  the  things  from  which  she  had  temporarily  stood  aside. 
She  went  to  matinees  and  shops  with  Caryl — a  new  triumphant 
Caryl  with  the  right  to  put  B.A.  (Hons.)  after  her  name! 
"And  Honours  in  Pure  Maths!"  Allan  would  say  as  though  to 
him  his  sister's  achievement  savoured  of  black  magic !  Tommy 
came  again  to  tea  and  dragged  Roberta  off  with  her  to  her 
flat  in  Bloomsbury.  Douglas  Rayne  was  there,  as  of  old;  as 
thin  as  ever,  as  insolent,  too,  and  as  exquisitely  dressed.  Allan 
had  called  him  a  "bounder,"  but  Allan  was  predisposed  to 
jealousy  and  was  always  inclined  to  take  this  attitude  to  any- 
one who  did  not  care  for  books  as  he  did.  Rayne,  of  course, 
knew  numbers  of  women:  but  he  was  a  gentleman.  He  had 
never  even  kissed  her.  Never  even  tried  to  kiss  her,  which  was 
much  more  remarkable.  Roberta  was  grateful,  though  she  was 
ready  to  sell  her  kisses  to  obtain  what  she  wanted.  Was  she 
going  to  get  it?  She  couldn't  help  feeling  that  it  was  time 
word  came  from  America  about  those  photographs.  Would  she 
get  that  contract  or  not  ? 


INTRUSION  201 

But  that  was  a  subject  to  which  Mr.  Rayne  never  referred. 
He  just  went  on  being  affable,  amusing  and  "gentlemanly," 
and  Roberta  could  not  imagine  why  Allan  should  object  to 
him.  Even  on  those  occasions  when  they  dined  tete-a-tete 
Mr.  Rayne  conducted  the  proceedings  with  every  semblance 
of  propriety.  A  bishop,  so  Roberta  put  it,  might  have  listened 
to  their  conversation:  it  was  impossible,  she  thought,  that  Mr. 
Rayne  could  be  a  "rotter."  He  seemed  to  want  nothing  save 
the  sight  of  her  happiness  and  enjoyment.  His  bored  acqui- 
escence in  life  quivered  at  the  sight  of  her  vivacity,  as  though 
it  borrowed  deeply  from  her  youth  and  vitality.  His  air  of 
habitual  fatigue  fascinated  her;  that  and  the  subtle  suggestion 
he  carried  about  with  him  of  some  hidden  grief  that  poisoned 
the  springs  of  happiness.  He  seldom  laughed  and  his  smile 
was  not  as  other  people's.  It  restricted  itself  to  the  right  of 
his  mouth — as  though  one  side  only  of  his  face  saw  a  joke — 
and  it  never  spread  to  his  eyes.  They  smouldered  and  stared, 
taking  in  Roberta's  "points"  as  though  she  had  been  a  race- 
horse. Roberta  rather  admired  his  eyes,  which  were  dark  and 
heavily  lashed  and  lidded.  She  was  not  clever  enough  to  know 
that  they  proclaimed  aloud  the  fact  that  their  owner  had  long 
ago  scrawled  "Vanitas  Vanitatum"  across  the  whole  of  the  page 
of  life.  And  perhaps  she  wouldn't  have  cared  if  she  had  known; 
Roberta  considered  herself  a  match  for  any  man.  She  believed, 
as  she  believed  in  nothing  else,  in  that  shield  of  her  not 
"being  that  sort."  Amid  the  clouds  of  her  perennial  vanity 
she  moved  serenely.  Besides,  it  may  be  that  one  does  not  have 
a  Delia  King  in  the  family  for  nothing ! 

Out  of  his  manifold  experience  young  Rayne  went  carefully. 
Very  carefully:  he  never  made  a  mistake.  He  was  always 
stealthy  and  leisured,  so  pre-eminently  what  Roberta  thought 
"so  gentlemanly."  He  had  reduced  seduction  to  a  fine  art, 
and  he  knew  how  to  wait  without  sign  or  quiver  of  impatience. 
The  plum  invariably  dropped,  exquisitely  ripe,  into  his  mouth : 
and  this  particular  plum  in  the  ripening  amused  him  con- 
siderably. He  had  found  the  taking  of  those  photographs  as 
interesting  as  useful.  Woman's  natural  vanity  was  a  marvel- 
lous piece  of  foresight  upon  the  part  of  Providence:  it  made  the 
way  of  the  male  a  good  deal  easier.  Because  of  it  he  told  far 
fewer  lies  than  would  otherwise  have  been  necessary,  which 
was  just  as  well,  because  lies  were  exhausting,  since  you  had  to 


202  INTRUSION 

remember  the  lies  yo.u  had  told  before  and  to  what  they  had 
committed  you — a  trying  business  for  one  who  liked  a  quiet 
life.  Not  that  many  lies,  with  Roberta,  had  been  necessary: 
the  one  concerned  with  the  tale  of  a  contract  had  been  so  tre- 
mendously successful.  She  had  swallowed  it  whole.  And  it 
really  had  been  fun  taking  those  photographs.  The  girl  was 
a  beauty  right  enough:  her  neck  and  shoulders  were  like  blue- 
veined  marble,  from  which  her  head  rose,  flower-like  and 
exquisite.  But — catch  the  guvnor  giving  anybody  a  contract 
of  that  sort! 

Out  of  his  experience,  too,  he  saw  that  Roberta  was  a  fool, 
for,  even  as  Martyn  Thorp  had  done,  he  had  looked  at  her  to 
some  purpose.  She  was  a  fool  right  enough,  but  she  was  an 
extraordinarily  pretty  fool.  The  freshness  of  her  skin,  its 
freedom  from  paint  and  powder  was  unusual  and  unbelievably 
fascinating  to  the  thin  young  Rayne  who,  in  the  whole  range 
of  his  experience,  had  never  encountered  anyone  with  such  a 
flawless  complexion.  He  amused  himself  by  wondering  how 
she  had  come  to  marry  that  solemn  young  man  with  a  limp 
and  a  taste  for  literature!  Literature!  Douglas  Rayne  would 
laugh,  remembering  the  picture  Tommy  had  drawn  for  him 
of  a  courtship,  honeymoon  and  marriage  conducted  like  a 
reading-tour  in  the  company  of  Lamb  and  Keats  and  Shelley 
and  Johnnies  like  that.  It  was  funny,  that,  damn  funny! 
Some  fellows  never  knew  their  luck! 

Not  that  the  thin  young  Rayne  regarded  marriage  as  "luck." 
Marriage  was  opportunity;  nothing  else,  except,  perhaps,  an 
unnecessary  complication.  It  was  a  complication  now,  of 
course;  but  Rayne  had  not  hitherto  known  marriage  to  form 
any  permanent  obstacle  to  his  desires.  Only — one  went  more 
carefully. 

He  went  so  carefully  with  Roberta  that  her  stupid  phrase 
about  his  gentlemanliness  bit  down  deeply  into  her  mind.  It 
went  to  strengthen  the  moral  shield  she  carried  about  with 
her — that  undying  belief  that  she  was  not  "that  sort."  Taken 
together  Tommy  found  them  a  trifle  tiresome,  because  Tommy 
was  "that  sort"  (it  explained  why  she  need  work  so  seldom)' 
and  she  knew  the  truth  about  the  thin  young  Rayne's  quality 
of  gentlemanliness.  Like  the  beauty  of  Tommy's  complexion 
it  went  no  more  than  skin-deep.  Not  that  Miss  Carew  cared 
in  the  least  about  his  lack  of  faithfulness  to  her.  She  asked  a 


INTRUSION  203 

good  deal  of  him,  but  not  that.  It  was  the  last  thing  she 
would  ask  of  any  man — certainly  of  Duggie  Rayne.  They  were 
admirably  matched. 

For  all  that  she  told  him,  once,  that  he  might  leave  the  kid 
alone. 

"She's  cold,  Dug.  Constitutionally  unaffected  by  the  genus 
Man.  Fact.  ...  Of  course  she  likes  men  to  make  fools  of 
themselves  over  her,  but  that's  another  matter." 

"She's  a  taker,  is  she,  not  a  giver?"  Rayne  wanted  to  know. 

"You  can  put  it  that  way  if  you  like,"  Tommy  told  him. 

Rayne  did  like. 

As  for  Tommy,  her  sense  of  duty  to  Roberta  was  served  by 
advising  her  never  again  to  visit  Rayne's  studio  alone. 

"Oh,  well — no  reason,"  she  said.  "But  you  may  as  well  be 
on  the  safe  side.  And  I  know  men  better  than  you  do.  You 
just  take  my  tip !" 

Roberta  grieved  for  the  state  of  Tommy's  mind.  But  whilst 
Tommy,  no  doubt  about  it,  underrated  Mr.  Rayne's  quality  of 
gentlemanliness  quite  alarmingly,  she  had  implanted  a  doubt 
which  took  root.  For  the  moment  Roberta's  confidence  in  her 
own  virtue  and  that  which  it  inspired  in  other  people  quivered 
away  from  its  foundations.  For  the  time  being  things  were 
"spoiled."  After  the  tete-a-tete  dinners  now  she  insisted  primly 
that  she  must  go  straight  home. 

She  went,  and  Rayne  took  himself  off.  A  tiger  of  rage  may 
have  smarted  within  him,  but  you  would  never  have  guessed  it; 
his  amiability  remained  unimpaired.  The  gesture  with  which 
he  raised  his  hat  and  accepted  her  ruling  pleased  Roberta's  lit- 
tle soul.  It  was  a  very  little  soul  and  easily  pleased.  It  loved 
a  gesture,  even  when  there  was  nothing  behind  it,  or  when, 
perhaps,  there  was  too  much. 


Occasionally  Allan  had  a  thrust  of  memory,  apt  to  be  dis- 
turbing. But  Roberta  was  learning  how  to  deal  with  such 
occasions,  so  that  it  was  not  she  who  found  them  disturbing. 
But  other  things  were.  .  .  . 

One  Thursday  evening  midway  through  January,  Allan  sur- 
prised Roberta  by  reaching  home  a  good  hour  earlier  than  he 


204  INTRUSION 

was  expected.  Roberta  had  been  to  Tommy's,  but  at  eight 
o'clock  an  intolerable  lassitude  had  descended  upon  her  and 
she  had  come  away,  her  thoughts  resolutely  fixed  on  bed  and 
sleep  to  keep  away  those  other  thoughts,  must  less  comforting, 
which  assailed  her  with  the  numbing  effect  of  pellets  of  ice. 
And  though  it  was  only  nine  o'clock  there  was  a  light  in  the 
hall,  and  as  she  fitted  her  key  in  the  lock  Allan's  step  came  up 
the  passage  and  Allan's  hand  on  the  door-knob  anticipated  the 
turning  of  her  key. 

She  offered  her  face  for  his  caress,  said  she  was  tired  and 
that  she  would  go  straight  up  to  bed. 

"What's  the  matter?"  Allan  asked. 

"Nothing  much.  .  .  .  I'm  a  bit  run  down,  I  think,  and  I 
suppose  I've  been  dancing  too  much." 

She  spoke  indifferently,  but  the  fear  in  her  heart  looked  out 
at  her  once  more.  It  disturbed  her  because,  until  this  evening, 
she  thought  she  had  forgotten  it. 

Later  Allan  came  up  with  hot  milk  and  biscuits,  and  the 
information  that  the  close  of  the  following  week  would  see  the 
end  of  his  evening  work.  He  was  jovial  about  that  and  full  of 
plans.  They  would  make  up  for  lost  time.  Caryl  should  get 
up  a  dance  at  Adelaide  Lodge,  where  the  rooms  were  big  enough 
for  dancing.  Also  there  were  plays  to  see,  and  Guen  and 
Antony  were  going  to  have  evenings  at  Tony's  old  room  in 
Bloomsbury  which  since  their  marriage  had  been  occupied  by 
some  artist  or  other  who  had  only  just  cleared  out.  Tony's 
evenings,  he  explained,  were  a  definite  feature  of  the  early 
days  of  Guen's  acquaintance  with  him.  "I  expect  they  made 
love  there,"  he  said,  "if  they  made  it  anywhere.  .  .  .  Love  in  an 
attic.  A  nice  attic,  Bobbie,  in  Bloomsbury  .  .  .  but  not  perhaps 
in  the  nice  part  of  Bloomsbury.  In  Theobald's  Road,  over- 
looking half  London.  You  might  like  to  go  occasionally." 

Roberta  said  she  would,  and  begged  him  to  turn  the  light 
out  because  her  head  ached.  So  Allan  pulled  back  a  curtain 
and  began  to  undress  by  the  faint  light  of  the  street  lamp 
without. 

Beyond  the  window  the  night  was  beautiful,  wrapped  in 
January's  diaphanous  veil.  The  white  stars  clustered  in  its 
floating  silver,  and  the  stunted  suburban  trees  rose  dim  behind 
it.  The  little  road  held  an  air  of  enchantment,  and  Allan  stood 
there  looking  at  it  as  if  he  were  enchanted  too.  The  night  had 


INTRUSION  205 

a  beauty  that  somehow  one  missed  in  the  day.  Or  had  he 
merely  a  trick  of  "missing"  things? 

"You'll  be  horribly  tired  in  the  morning,"  said  Roberta. 

Allan  dropped  the  blind  and  began  his  preparations  for  bed. 

"By  the  way,  darling,"  he  said  presently,  "I  hope  you  don't 
see  much  of  young  Rayne  these  days?" 

"No — not  much,"  said  Roberta.  She  said  it  unblushingly, 
and  to  it  she  added,  "And  when  I  do  it's  business.  .  .  .  That 
old  contract." 

"Isn't  that  settled  yet?" 

"No.     They  want  some  more  photographs." 

"Then  they  can't  have  them." 

"No,  I  don't  think  they  can  ...  it  makes  one  so  cheap." 

"I  hope  you'll  be  firm  about  it.  ...  I  don't  like  to  think 
of  you  having  anything  whatever  to  do  with  the  bounder." 

"I  don't  see  why  you  want  to  begin  about  that  at  this  time 
of  night,"  said  Roberta.  "What's  started  you  on  it  again?" 

"Oh  .  .  .  just  that  he  happened  to  come  into  the  office  to-day 
i — some  difficulty  over  a  policy.  ...  I  wish  you'd  promise  me 
not  to  see  him  again.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  you  might?" 

Under  the  bedclothes  Roberta  shrugged  careless  shoulders 
and  took  the  line  of  least  resistance. 

"Oh,  all  right,"  she  said,  "if  it'll  please  you." 

"It  will,"  said  Allan. 

There  wouldn't  be  much  chance,  Roberta  reflected,  of  her 
seeing  anyone  now  that  her  freedom  was  coming  to  an  end. 

That  was  how  she  thought  of  Allan's  imminent  early  arrival 
from  the  office — as  a  curtailment  of  her  liberty.  She  really 
thought  liberty  was  like  that.  She  had  a  sudden  vision  of  long 
winter  evenings  stretched  out  dully  in  front  of  her,  dotted  at 
intervals  with  a  dinner  in  town,  or  a  play  or  dance.  And 
coffee  and  talk  on  Guen  and  Gore's  "Thursdays."  Talk  that 
she  couldn't  understand,  and  coffee — for  which  she  had  no 
great  liking. 

She  was  still  conscious,  lying  there  in  her  white  bed,  of  that 
horrible  sensation  of  fatigue.  She  couldn't  imagine  why  she 
should  get  tired  of  late  in  this  dreadful  fashion.  And  it  wasn't 
only  the  tiredness.  .  .  .  She  remembered  the  moment  when 
in  the  dance  her  hand  had  dragged  on  Rayne's,  when  she  had 
said,  "I'm  so  sorry.  .  .  .  I'm  afraid  I  must  sit  down  for  a 
minute."  The  red  wine  he  had  brought  her  had  revived  her, 


206  INTRUSION 

but  as  she  drank  it  a  nightmare  of  a  thought  seared  its  way 
through  her  mind.  It  came  again  to  her  now.  Of  course,  it 
couldn't  be.  ...  It  was  impossible.  And  the  impossible  did 
not  happen.  Only  supposing,  sometimes,  it  did?  Self-pity 
engulfed  her.  She  wished  she  had  never  got  married.  .  .  . 
She  began  to  cry. 

"Allan,  I'm  so  tired,  and  you  keep  on  lecturing  me!" 
Instantly    Allan's    arms    enfolded    her    with    an    immense 
tenderness. 

"My  dear,  I  forgot.  Don't  cry.  ...  I'm  a  clumsy 
beast!  .  .  .  You  want  a  holiday.  We  must  see  what  we  can 
arrange." 

She  lay  passive  and  weeping  in  his  arms,  and  over  him  again 
there  flooded  that  inordinate  sense  of  tenderness,  a  great  wave 
of  that  protective  instinct  by  which  she  had  caught — and  by 
which  she  held — him.  She  was  still  a  child  to  be  comforted 
and  looked  after.  He  put  his  lips  to  her  hair,  patting  her 
shoulder. 

"No,  don't,  please,  dear  .  .  .  don't,  don't  cry  like  that!" 
For  once,  however,  Roberta  forgot  the  importance  of  leaving 
off  at  the  right  moment.  She  went  on  crying;  not  passionately, 
but  drearily,  hopelessly,  and  all  the  time  Allan  went  on  patting 
her  shoulder  and  wondering  what  there  was  in  her  crying  that 
should  tear  at  him  like  this.  He  simply  could  not  bear  it. 


Allan's  late  work  broke  up  even  earlier  than  he  had  expected. 
On  the  Thursday  of  the  following  week  he  suddenly  found 
himself  free  at  seven  o'clock  to  go  home.  Antony  Gore  had 
phoned  during  the  morning  to  tell  him  that  they  were  all  to 
be  at  the  Attic  that  evening,  and  that  Guen  hoped  he  would 
come  along  and  bring  Roberta.  At  ten  o'clock  that  morning 
the  pleasing  project  had  appeared  hopeless;  but  work  had 
sloughed  off  soon  after  six,  and  by  seven  Allan  had  his  hat  and 
coat  on  and  was  making  a  bee-line  for  Roberta  and  Highgate. 

But  Roberta  was  not  at  Highgate.  On  the  dining-room 
mantelpiece  a  piece  of  paper  was  propped  up  upon  which  was 
written  in  Roberta's  handwriting,  which  nothing  seemed  able 
to  improve,  "Have  gone  out.  Shall  not  be  later  than  ten." 


INTRUSION  207 

It  was  signed  with  a  big  round  childish  "B,"  which  stood  for 
"Berta"  or  "Bobbie,"  as  your  fancy  pleased. 

"Damn!"  Allan  said,  and  was  sensible  of  a  chill,  as  though 
the  fireless  room  had  struck  cold.  He  went  upstairs,  opened 
the  wardrobe  door  and  discovered  that  Roberta's  evening  dress 
was  missing.  Light  dawned  upon  him.  She  had  gone  to  one 
of  Tommy's  "affairs":  it  was  only  on  these  occasions,  he 
knew  these  days,  that  Roberta  wore  her  nicest  frock.  He  recol- 
lected, too,  that  Tommy's  flat  was  in  Bloomsbury,  near  enough 
to  the  Attic  to  make  it  possible  for  him  to  collect  Roberta 
en  route. 

Tommy's  flat  was  not  self-contained.  Allan  knocked  at  the 
big  front  door  and  asked  for  "Miss  Carew." 

"You'd  better  go  up!"  said  the  old  hag  who  opened  it. 
"She's  having  one  of  her  everlasting  parties  by  the  sound  of 
things.  You're  about  the  tenth  I've  opened  the  door  to  this 
evening  and  I'm  about  tired  of  it.  Why  you  can't  ring  her 
bell  I  don't  know." 

Allan  apologised  and  went  on  up  the  stairs.  The  house 
smelt  musty  and  the  stairs  were  not  too  clean:  but  as  he 
ascended  things  improved.  Red  carpet  appeared  on  the  stair- 
case, and  black  and  white  and  purple  drapings.  Three  closed 
doors  opened  out  of  the  landing  upon  which  Tommy's  name 
appeared,  and  from  behind  the  centre  one  noises  of  various 
and  vociferous  character  were  issuing.  Allan  hesitated  for  an 
instant,  his  hand  on  the  knob  of  the  door;  then  knocked.  No 
answer.  Allan  repeated  the  knock,  then,  partly  because  he 
was  in  a  hurry  and  partly  because  he  was  assailed  not  so  much 
by  impatience  as  by  misgiving,  he  turned  the  handle  and 
looked  in.  Through  a  haze  of  smoke  he  saw  a  number  of 
unfamiliar  faces  and  figures,  whose  owners  were  not  yet  aware 
of  his  presence.  Above  the  din  of  laughter  and  talk  a  young 
man,  dangling  his  legs  from  the  table,  was  shouting  something 
that  seemed  to  be  poetry — of  sorts: 

"To-morrow  all  our  passion  will  be  ashes." 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Allan  from  the  doorway.  "I  beg 
your  pardon  .  .  .  but  is  my  wife  here?" 

The  din  went  on.  Allan,  raising  his  voice,  tried  again.  "I 
beg  your  pardon.  .  .  ."  But  the  result  was  the  same.  He 
walked  farther  into  the  room  and  addressed  himself  to  a  young 
woman  in  a  purple  cloak  and  very  little  else,  who  turned  her 


.208  INTRUSION 

head  at  that  moment  and  saw  him.  "I  want  my  wife,"  he 
said.  "Can  you  tell  me  if  she  is  here?  Suffield  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Suffield." 

The  young  woman  in  the  purple  coat  turned  from  him,  put 
her  hands  to  her  mouth  and  yelled: 

"Here,  shut  up,  some  of  you!  Mr.  Poet,  you  shut  up.  ... 
Here's  a  gentleman  wants  his  wife!" 

The  din  quieted.  Through  the  comparative  peace  a  feminine 
voice  floated,  insolently  affectionate. 

"You've  come  to  the  wrong  house,  darling." 

Allan's  good  humour  was  deserting  him. 

"Is  Miss  Carew  here?"  he  demanded.  His  voice  sounded 
rude  and  angry,  but  it  did  not  reach  Miss  Carew,  who  had  her 
back  to  the  door  and  her  arms  round  the  necks  of  two  male 
somebodies. 

"To-morrow  .  .  ."  began  the  poet  again,  as  though  afraid  it 
would  arrive  before  he  had  finished  the  first  verse. 

"Oh,  shut  up!"  yelled  the  young  woman  in  the  purple 
cloak.  "Do  you  think  we  want  to  hear  your  blasted  rot  all 
night,  and  with  a  gentleman  wanting  his  wife,  too?" 

The  poet  subsided.  The  young  woman  in  purple  went  over 
to  Tommy  and  shook  her. 

"I  don't  know  if  you're  gone  suddenly  deaf  or  what,  but 
I've  told  you  three  times  here's  a  gentleman  wants  his  wife! 
D'you  want  me  to  yell  myself  hoarse?" 

Tommy  turned,  still  clinging  to  the  necks  of  her  companions 
who  perforce  turned  with  her,  looking  queerly  at  Allan,  with 
their  faces  very  close  together,  over  Tommy's  shoulder. 

"Who  wants  his  wife?"  she  demanded.  "Most  unreas'n'ble 
request,  I  call  it  ...  most  unreas'n'ble.  .  .  ." 

Then  she  saw  Allan  and  removed  her  arms  so  suddenly  that 
the  heads  of  her  companions  struck  painfully  together  before 
their  owners  found  themselves  on  the  floor. 

"Oh,  it's  you!"  she  said. 

She  came  unsteadily  over  to  Allan  and  stood  looking  at  him 
as  if  striving  to  remember  something. 

"You're  .  .  .  you're  Suffield,  aren't  you?"  she  said.  She 
was  very  drunk. 

"Yes,"  said  Allan.     "I  thought  I  should  find  my  wife  here." 

"Oh,  you're  the  gentleman  who  wants  his  wife!  .  .  ."  She 
drew  herself  up,  still  making  this  tremendous  effort  to  remember 


INTRUSION  209 

something  that  dodged  about  on  the  brink  of  recollection.  Then 
it  came. 

"Oh  ...  s'cuse  me,  Mr.  Suffield.  ...  I  couldn't  think  for 
the  moment  who  you  were.  No,  Bobbie  isn't  here.  I  asked 
her  to  come,  but  she  had  something  better  to  do.  ...  I'm 
having  a  little  bottle  party.  .  .  .  The  idea  is  everybody  comes 
with  a  bottle  ...  of  cold  tea,  of  course!  .  .  .  Have  a  glass 
of  something?" 

"Thank  you,  no!"  said  Allan,  and  made  for  the  door.  As 
he  closed  it  the  voice  of  the  poet  was  heard  asking  in  a  loud 
voice  for  the  port. 

Outside  on  the  landing  Allan  stood  still  and  tried  to  collect 
his  thoughts.  So  this  was  the  sort  of  "affair"  Miss  Carew 
gave  and  to  which  Roberta  went  so  often?  It  was  outrageous. 
His  brain  seemed  to  be  boiling  round  with  fury:  he  couldn't 
think.  He  could  scarcely  walk  down  the  stairs. 

But  he  reached  the  bottom  at  last,  and  opening  the  front 
door  he  let  himself  out  into  the  street.  It  was  beginning  to 
rain,  and  the  sensation  of  the  drops  on  his  face  seemed  to  cool 
his  anger.  The  thing  struck  him  suddenly  as  funny.  He  stood 
still  in  the  quiet  street  and  laughed  aloud. 

Presently,  when  he  stopped  laughing  and  moved  on,  he  dis- 
covered that  he  was  overwhelmed  with  relief  that  Roberta  had 
not  been  there.  He  wondered  what  he  would  have  done,  what 
he  would  have  said,  if  she  had  been.  But  this  friendship  with 
Tommy  Carew  was  coming  to  an  end.  He  would  make  sure 
of  that,  at  least. 

He  walked  on  to  the  Attic,  turning  that  resolution  over  in 
his  mind,  and  wondering  vaguely  once  or  twice  where  Roberta 
had  actually  gone. 

Tommy,  drunk  as  she  was,  could  have  told  him.  If  he  had 
listened  outside  her  door  he  would  have  heard  her  telling  her 
guests. 

"Well,  here's  a  do!"  she  said.  "You  wouldn't  like  to  know, 
any  of  you,  where  the  genelman's  wife  really  is,  I  suppose?" 

The  company  sat  up.  It  wanted  very  much  to  know  where 
the  gentleman's  wife  really  was.  .  .  . 

"Well,  she's  in  a  geneleman's  flat  at  Victoria  .  .  .  gentleman 
you  all  know — Mr.  Douglas  Rayne — Esquire  ...  I  don't 
think.  .  .  .  Well,  'ere's  luck  to  'em,  anyway!" 

It  was  quite  true.    Roberta  was  with  Douglas  Rayne,  but 


210  INTRUSION 

she  had  gone  there  expecting  to  find  Tommy.  She  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  "bottle"  party  and  had  not  been  asked.  Rayne 
had  seen  to  that. 

"It's  a  dirty  trick,  you  know,"  Tommy  had  said  to  Rayne, 
but,  after  all,  Roberta  was  a  fool;  a  fool  who  didn't  play  the 
game;  and  she  deserved  to  be  taught  a  lesson.  In  any  case, 
too,  Miss  Carew  could  not  afford  just  then  to  offend  Mr. 
Douglas  Rayne,  who  for  the  time  being  had  the  "cinch"  on  her. 
It  was  awkward,  damned  awkward;  but  it  couldn't  be  helped. 
All  the  same,  once  or  twice  during  the  evening,  even  through 
the  fumes  of  drink  and  the  smoke  and  innuendo  she  had 
evoked  to  drown  misgivings,  a  streak  of  pity  showed  for  the 
poor  pretty  fool  she  called  her  friend.  But  when  Tommy  felt 
the  twinge  of  it  she  lulled  it  to  sleep  with  more  drink  and  the 
reflection  that  whatever  happened  Roberta  would  keep  her 
mouth  shut.  She'd  have  sense  enough  for  that.  And  she  was 
married.  Marriage,  thank  the  Lord,  covered  a  multitude  of 
sins.  Whenever  Miss  Carew  remembered  that  she  would 
toss  off  another  glass  of  wine  to  the  toast  of  "Well,  'ere's  to 
marriage  .  .  .  the  friend  of  every  pore  girl.  I  don't  think!  .  .  ." 

And  the  poet  would  begin  again,  "To-morrow  all  our  passion 
will  be  ashes.  .  .  ." 


CHAPTER   NINE 


TO  Allan's  way  of  thinking,  Guen's  "first"  evening  was 
very  far  from  successful.  At  the  last  moment  A.G.  had 
been  prevented  from  coming,  but  a  good  many  other 
people  had  not,  and  between  them  they  hemmed  Guen  in  so 
successfully  that  Allan's  ideas  of  a  "quiet  talk"  had  no  chance 
whatsoever  of  survival.  Quite  early  in  the  evening  his  amiable 
dislike  of  the  writing  fraternity  broke  out  upon  him  like  a 
rash,  and  he  was  glad  when  at  nine  o'clock  the  pretext  of 
handing  round  coffee  delivered  him  from  the  hands  of  a  gen- 
tleman in  knee-breeches  who  owned  several  woman's  weeklies 
and  ran  them  on  the  assumption  that  the  feminine  world  is 
made  up  of  flappers  and  expectant  mothers.  But  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  coffee  operations  the  door  opened  and  Madeleine 
Hervey  came  in.  Allan  started,  spilling  hot  coffee  over  his 
hand  and  down  his  trouser-leg. 

"How  do  you  do,  Allan?"  she  said.  "It's  ages  since  we 
met!" 

"Ages,"  said  Allan.     "Have  some  coffee?" 

"No,  thanks.  I've  just  come  from  a  terrific  dinner.  I  heard 
Guen  was  in  town  and  rushed  on  to  see  her." 

Her  bare  head  and  thick  wrap  confirmed  her  statement, 
which  seemed  likely  to  be  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  their  con- 
versation. To  Allan,  standing  there  before  her  with  the  cup 
of  spilled  coffee  in  his  hand,  it  was  as  if  he  had  never  really 
seen  Madeleine  before.  Her  face,  pale  as  ever  in  its  soft  frame 
of  dark  hair,  yet  suggested  not  only  health,  but  happiness — 
the  sort  of  happiness  one  strives  after  and  wins  for  one's  self, 
that  is  the  result  of  character  far  more  than  of  good  fortune, 
that  only  comes  to  those  who  have  built  up  their  castle  of  hope 
from  the  ruins  which  have  fallen  clattering  about  their  feet. 
But  Allan,  not  knowing  this,  was  strangely  disconcerted  by  the 
quiet  that  looked  out  of  her  eyes,  which  invested  the  smile  she 

211 


212  INTRUSION 

bent  upon  him  when  she  suggested  that  he  put  down  the  coffee 
or  offer  it,  perhaps,  to  somebody  else.  .  .  .  Allan  found  her 
self-possession  intolerable,  and  it  dismayed  him,  because — he 
hadn't  any.  He  could  feel  the  colour  rising  in  his  face  and 
rising  the  higher  because  Madeleine's  did  not  rise  at  all,  or  rose 
so  very  little  that  in  that  dun  room  it  was  not  betrayed.  Only 
her  pale  face  and  quiet  eyes,  soft  and  gleaming,  like  black  vel- 
vet. ...  To  Allan,  who  could  think  of  nothing  to  say,  it 
seemed  an  age  before  she  turned  away  to  greet  Guen  and  the 
people  she  knew.  He  finished  with  the  coffee  and,  watching 
his  opportunity,  went  over  to  Guen. 

"Do  you  mind  if  I  slip  off?"  he  inquired. 

"Of  course  I  mind.  .  .  ."  She  edged  him  into  a  corner  by 
the  door.  "Look  here,  I've  an  editor  to  see  in  the  morning 
and  I  can't  sleep  here.  The  bed  hasn't  been  aired.  Can  you 
and  Roberta  put  me  up?" 

He  said  "of  course,"  and  that  she  was  to  come  on  as  soon 
as  she  liked. 

"But  why  not  wait?  It  isn't  ten  yet.  And  don't  you  want 
to  have  a  chat  with  Madeleine?" 

"I  don't  think  so,"  he  said.  He  resented  Madeleine — or, 
more  particularly,  he  resented  the  undeniable  fact  that  her 
unexpected  appearance  had  meant  hot  colour  in  his  face,  hot 
coffee  down  his  trouser-leg.  And  it  ought  not  to  have  done, 
for  across  the  path  of  their  friendship  emotion  of  that  sort  had 
never  been  spilled.  Even  now  Allan  saw  it  only  as  a  green  and 
pleasant  path  in  a  familiar  country;  had  forgotten,  even  if  he 
had  ever  properly  realised,  that  something  which  had  given  it 
a  twist  .  .  .  carried  it  briefly  and  unsuccessfully  into  country 
much  less  familiar.  Besides,  it  was  just  at  that  point  they  had 
turned  their  backs  on  the  treacherous  path:  to  Allan  such 
glimpses  of  new  country  as  the  twist  in  the  path  had  opened  up 
had  been  fleet  and  meaningless,  and  if  they  had  been  anything 
else  to  Madeleine  it  was  obvious  she  had  forgotten  them.  That 
air  of  hers— of  peace,  of  quiet  happiness — was  of  the  soul  and 
indestructible.  She  stood  alone,  firmly  rooted.  She  had  char- 
acter and — just  a  little — hardness.  You  couldn't  be  sorry 
for  her  or  anxious.  She  had  the  courage  to  bid  life  stand  and 
deliver.  She  couldn't  be  beaten  or  crushed.  Neither  could 
you  prevent  her  from  achieving  happiness:  she  depended  for 
that  upon  nobody. 


INTRUSION  213 

Number  Sixteen,  when  Allan  reached  it,  was  in  darkness. 
He  saw  at  once  that  Roberta  had  not  returned.  "Not  later 
than  ten,"  her  note  had  said,  and  it  was  now  well  after  eleven. 

"Theatre,  I  expect,"  Guen  said  when  she  arrived.  She 
sounded  detached  and  unconcerned,  as  she  probably  was. 
Detachment  and  unconcern  were  the  qualities  she  had  brought 
at  last  to  Allan's  marriage.  They  masked  other  things.  But 
she  saw  that  to-night  he  was  worried.  "Any  reason  why  she 
shouldn't  have  gone  to  a  theatre?"  she  asked. 

"Only  that  she  couldn't  have  meant  to  go  to  a  theatre  if 
she  intended  to  be  home  by  ten  o'clock." 

"But  couldn't  she  alter  her  mind?" 

"Yes.  But  she  hasn't.  I'm  being  a  fool,  of  course.  It's 
running  into  that  awful  crowd." 

"Miss  Carew's  crowd,  you  mean?  Is  'awful'  very  fair? 
I'm  quite  sure  you  thought  my  crowd  pretty  'awful/  didn't 
you?" 

"But  for  different  reasons.  These  people  are  mere  hangers- 
on:  they  belong  to  the  very  outside  edge  of  the  fringe  of  the 
Arts.  They've  no  standards,  no  occupation,  no  anything  that 
matters.  .  .  .  The  Bolshevists  would  shoot  the  lot  of  them. 
To-night  Miss  Carew  was  very  drunk.  So,  for  that  matter, 
was  everybody  else." 

"Give  me  a  cigarette,  will  you?"  said  Guen.  "It's  Tommy 
Carew,  isn't  it,  the  girl  who  won  some  newspaper  cinema  com- 
petition a  few  years  ago?  I  know  people  who  thought  awfully 
well  of  her." 

"Of  her  ability?  Yes,  but  she  hardly  ever  works.  ...  If 
she  drinks,  that  explains  it." 

"But  does  she?" 

"She  was  drunk  to-night." 

"That  doesn't  prove  your  case.  However,  why  do  you  let 
Roberta  see  so  much  of  her  if  you  disapprove  of  her  like 
that?" 

"How  on  earth  am  I  to  stop  her?  She's  here,  night  after 
night,  on  her  own.  You  can't  wonder  she  gets  bored.  Thank 
God,  that's  over,  anyway!  This  late  work's  the  devil.  .  .  . 
I've  tried  to  get  her  to  go  round  home  to  tea  and  to  stay  to 
dinner:  but  I  gather  Pen  spreads  herself  there  a  bit  too  much. 
Caryl  .  .  .  whom  she  likes  ...  is  always  shut  up  with  her 
books  or  running  off  to  the  Hestons." 


214  INTRUSION 

"My  dear  Allan,  the  Hestons  gave  up  the  Wokingham  cot- 
tage back  in  October,  and  since  they've  been  home  Caryl's  left 
them  rather  severely  alone.  (The  family,  by  the  way,  spends 
an  appalling  amount  of  time  wondering  why!)  It  certainly 
isn't  Caryl  who's  inaccessible:  to  my  knowlege  she's  made  at 
least  three  abortive  efforts  to  drag  Roberta  into  some  dissipation 
or  other  within  the  last  month." 

"I've  heard  nothing  of  it." 

Guen  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"Hasn't  she  any  other  friends?" 

"I  don't  think  so.  She  doesn't  seem  to  have  a  genius  for 
friendship.  Neither  do  I,  for  that  matter.  Of  course,  there 
was  Martyn  .  .  .  Martyn  Thorp — you  never  met  him.  He 
didn't  last.  He  made  a  fool  of  himself  over  Roberta  and  cleared 
out." 

Guen  raised  her  eyebrows  as  one  who  said  "Really!  That's 
very  interesting!"  But  she  did  not  interrupt,  and  Allan  went 
on.  "She  looked,  once,  as  though  she  was  getting  too  friendly 
with  some  awful  bounder  she  was  meeting  at  the  Carew  girl's 
flat.  I  saw  him  one  night  at  some  play  ...  oh,  an  awful 
bounder!  It  made  me  sick  Roberta  should  get  within  a  mile 
of  him.  .  .  .  He  flattered  her  by  making  out  he  could  get  her 
some  contract  or  other  for  photographs  for  cigarette  boxes  in 
America." 

"And  could  he?" 

"God  knows!" 

"And  the  bounder.  .  .  .  What  happened?" 

"Photographs,  as  usual  You'll  find  'em  in  the  next  room. 
The  house  is  becoming  a  blooming  photographer's  shop.  Then 
one  day  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  photograph  stunt  was  being 
a  bit  overdone.  So  I  got  her  to  promise  to  make  an  end  of  it." 

"And  did  she?" 

"Promise?     Oh,  yes." 

"I  didn't  mean  that.    Did  she  'make  an  end  of  it'?" 

Allan  looked  at  her  with  puckered  brows. 

"What  are  you  getting  at?"  he  said. 

"You  wouldn't  thank  me  for  telling  you." 

"I've  never  thanked  you  for  most  of  the  things  you've  been 
good  enough  to  tell  me  about  Roberta.  This  time  you're  trying 
to  suggest  that  Roberta  hasn't  exactly  a  strict  regard  for  truth. 
Is  that  it?" 


INTRUSION  215 

Guen  smiled. 

"Few  people  have,  you  know.  It's  an  open  question  whether 
a  strict  regard  for  truth's  a  virtue  or  not.  Like  punctual- 
ity." 

Allan  remembered  the  number  of  paltry  lies  in  which  he  had 
already  found  Roberta  out,  and  suddenly  the  implication  of 
what  Guen  had  hinted — what  he  thought  she  hinted — knocked 
at  his  brain.  "Good  God!"  he  said.  "I  never  thought  of 
that!" 

But  he  had.  He  realised  now  that  he'd  been  thinking,  all 
the  time,  of  nothing  else.  Roberta  was  spending  the  evening 
with  Douglas  Rayne! 

"I  shouldn't  get  so  dramatic  about  it  if  I  were  you,"  Guen 
said.  "You  can't  expect  to  keep  Roberta  from  her  chosen  pals 
as  easily  as  all  that.  She  likes  'em.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if 
she  didn't  want  a  little  relaxation  from  you  .  .  .  from  us. 
Besides,  Roberta  can  look  after  herself.  .  .  ." 

"She  says  she  can.  But  can  she?  Sometimes  I  have  visions 
of  her  getting  herself  into  some  impossible  position." 

"Oh,  bosh!  Anyway,  you  can't  alter  her  .  .  .  not  really, 
not  radically,  I  mean.  You've  got  to  learn  to  like  her  as  she 
is." 

Sometimes  one  got  tired  of  sitting  quiet  with  folded  hands: 
one  had  to  ram  some  nail  or  other  into  position;  pin  down 
some  truth  upon  Allan's  canvas  of  life;  even  if  it  were  not  a 
very  large  or  important  one.  Allan  sat  up  and  looked  at  this 
nail  Guen  had  driven  home;  this  truth  she  had  plumped  down 
before  him.  And  he  rejected  it. 

"That's  rubbish!"  he  said.  "I've  never  seen  Roberta  as 
the  Beautiful  Illusion  you  seem  to  imagine.  I  see  what  she  is 
and  what  she  isn't.  I've  always  done  that — only  you  can't 
admit  it  because  you've  never  forgiven  me  for  not  marrying 
Madeleine.  But  Madeleine  never  wanted  me — in  the  way 
Roberta  did.  Madeleine's  stronger  than  I  am.  .  .  .  I'm 
stronger  than  Roberta.  That's  how  it  worked.  Roberta  has 
no  moral  fibre." 

"I  thought  love  made  us  blind?" 

"It  doesn't.    It  makes  us  see  more — and  deeper." 

She  looked  up  at  him  sharply,  as  if  she  had  not  expected  him 
to  know  that. 

"You're  getting  on,"  she  said. 


2i  6  INTRUSION 

At  midnight  she  went  up  to  bed,  and  in  the  cold  dining-room 
Allan  kept  vigil  alone. 

What  Guen  had  said  had  disturbed  him  as  nothing  else  she 
had  said  of  Roberta  (and  she  had  said  a  good  deal)  had  ever 
done  before,  because  somehow  it  had  never  occurred  to  him 
that  Roberta  would  deliberately  break  a  promise.  That  she 
told  lies,  he  knew:  stupid,  unnecessary  lies  about  trivial  things, 
like  dates  and  times  and  photographs;  but  that  was  different. 
He  had  always  believed  her  on  the  bigger  things.  She  was 
weak,  not  wicked;  vain,  not  vicious.  She  couldn't  possibly 
be  spending  the  evening  with  Rayne.  For  all  that,  the 
monstrous  suspicion  that  she  was  stayed  in  his  mind.  He 
hunted  it  out  once,  but  it  recurred.  Every  moment  it  grew,  till 
it  filled  the  whole  universe. 

It  was  absurd  to  think  that  he  had  to  sit  there  until  she  came 
— that,  even  supposing  she  were  with  Rayne,  he  could  not 
go  to  fetch  her  because  he  had  no  idea  where  the  bounder 
lived. 

Half-past  twelve  came,  and  five  minutes  later  the  sound  of 
the  little  front  gate  opening,  shutting,  and  the  turn  of  a  key 
in  the  lock.  He  rushed  to  the  door  of  the  room,  and  for  a 
fraction  of  a  second  he  and  Roberta  stood  looking  at  each  door 
across  the  narrow  space  of  the  little  square  hall.  Then  Roberta 
turned,  shut  the  door,  put  her  umbrella  in  the  stand  and  came 
past  him  into  the  room. 

"I'm  sorry  I'm  so  late,"  she  said. 

Allan  stood  irresolute,  arrested  by  the  tired  whiteness  of  her 
face,  the  way  her  ungloved  hand  caught  at  the  table,  as  if  for 
support.  It  kept  him,  even  in  that  moment,  from  hurling  his 
monstrous  suspicion  at  her — the  suspicion  that  had  filled  the 
universe.  He  said  instead,  irritably,  as  though  her  lateness  had 
merely  inconvenienced  him,  "Where  on  earth  have  you  been?" 
For,  now  that  she  had  actually  come,  his  suspicion  seemed  as 
absurd  as  it  was  nasty,  and  the  uglier  things  of  life  never  went, 
somehow,  with  Roberta's  appearance — but  only  the  things  that 
were  silly  or  vain  or  capricious.  Looking  at  her,  his  anger  fell 
from  him,  leaving  only  this  absurd  ill-humour  of  the  man  who 
has  been  kept,  unnecessarily,  out  of  his  bed. 

"I've  been  worried  to  death.  ...  I  wish  you  wouldn't  do 
this  sort  of  thing,  Roberta.  It's  most  inconsiderate." 

Roberta's  left  hand  still  clung  to  the  edge  of  the  table,  as  if 


INTRUSION  217 

for  support.  With  the  other  she  dragged  off  her  hat  and  began 
to  unbutton  her  coat,  which  was  very  wet. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry.  I  went  to  a  party  of  Tommy's.  I  quite 
forgot  how  the  time  was  going." 

She  knew  at  once  that  she  had  said  the  wrong  thing.  The 
Allan  who  stood  there  in  front  of  her  was  not  the  Allan  she 
knew,  the  Allan  she  had  known,  so  far,  how  to  manage.  He 
had  gone  a  step  beyond  her:  the  magic  circle  was  broken. 
Something  in  his  white  face  frightened  her.  Besides,  she  was 
feeling  horribly  ill.  .  .  . 

"Why  do  you  lie  to  me?"  Allan  said  quietly. 

"I'm  not  lying." 

Allan's  suspicion  fell  upon  him  again — like  a  pall,  choking 
him.  He  went  forward  and  took  Roberta  fiercely  by  the  arm, 
so  that  she  cried  out  with  the  pain  of  it. 

"Allan  .  .  .  you're  hurting  my  arm!" 

"Don't  lie  to  me,  then.     Tell  me  the  truth!" 

"I  have.     Why  don't  you  believe  me?" 

"Because  I  happen  to  know  that  you  haven't  been  near 
Tommy  Carew." 

She  shrank  back  from  the  thing  she  read  in  his  face.  In 
some  queer  fashion  the  room  seemed  to  be  receding:  the  lights 
swayed,  grew  dim.  She  opened  her  mouth  to  speak,  but  closed 
it  again  without  saying  anything  at  all.  Allan's  grip  tightened 
on  her  arm,  pulling  her  away  from  the  support  of  the  table. 

"Look  here,  Roberta,  I  want  the  truth — now!" 

"I  can't  .  .  .  not  to-night,  Allan,  please.  I'm  not  well.  .  .  . 
Let  me  go.  ...  I'll  explain  to-morrow.  Please  let  me  go." 

"When  you've  told  me  the  truth.  Not  a  second  before.  Not 
if  it  keeps  us  up  all  night." 

His  voice  was  rough,  like  his  touch,  with  anger.  He  hated 
her. 

"Allan  .  .  .  please.  .  .  ." 

She  clutched  suddenly  at  the  table  edge,  missed  and  twisted 
into  a  crumpled  heap  at  his  feet. 

Even  then  his  anger  didn't  leave  him.  Its  force  crashed 
down  upon  pity  and  killed  it.  Roberta  in  his  arms  might  have 
been  a  wooden  image.  He  laid  her  down  upon  the  settee 
behind  the  door  and  went  out  of  the  room.  Guen,  roused  out 
of  her  first  sleep  by  the  sound  of  raised  voices,  had  hurried  into 
a  dressing-gown  and  was  already  half-way  down  the  stairs. 


2i  8  INTRUSION 

Speechless,  Allen  strode  past  her  and  went  on  up  the  stairs. 
She  heard  the  opening  and  shutting  of  his  bedroom  door  and 
the  turning  of  the  key  in  the  lock. 

On  the  dining-room  settee  Roberta  lay  still,  with  her  head 
sideways  against  the  cushions.  She  opened  her  eyes  as  Guen 
came  into  the  room  and  tried  to  sit  up.  Her  beauty  was 
blurred  and  dimmed ;  its  vivid  streak  paled  and  thinned. 

"I  think  I  must  have  fainted — I'm  better  now,"  she  explained. 

For  a  moment  her  hands  did  futile  feeble  things  with  her 
hair.  Then  suddenly  she  flung  her  arms  around  Guen's  neck 
and  began  to  cry. 

"Oh,  I'm  so  miserable!"  she  sobbed;  "and  I'm  not  well, 
and  I  wish  I  was  dead!" 

"Oh,  nonsense!"  Guen  said,  patting  her  shoulder.  "You'll 
feel  better  to-morrow.  One  always  does." 

She  meant,  probably,  that  the  Robertas  always  do. 

"I  shan't,"  said  Roberta,  and  sat  up.  "I  think  life's  beastly 
i — perfectly  beastly.  And  I  wish  I'd  never  been  born." 

"I  think  you'd  better  tell  me  why,"  said  Guen,  "and  then 
have  some  hot  milk  and  come  straight  up  to  bed.  It's  getting 
late." 

"Yes,"  said  Roberta;  but  she  was  a  long  while  beginning, 
and  what  she  had  to  say  took  some  time  because  its  "beastli- 
ness" clogged  her  tongue  and  brought  her  many  times  to  silence. 

"I  can  never  tell  Allan,  never!"  sobbed  Roberta  when  what 
she  had  to  say  was  finished.  "I  never  meant  to  tell  anybody — 
ever.  It's  too  beastly.  I  needn't  have  if  Allan  hadn't  known 
I  hadn't  been  to  Tommy's.  How  did  he  know,  Guen?" 

Guen  explained. 

"Tommy's  a  beast,"  Roberta  said.  "She's  let  me  down 
properly.  .  .  .  I'll  never  speak  to  her  again — never!" 

"Of  course  you  won't,"  said  Guen.  "But  you  must  tell 
Allan  what  you  have  told  me." 

"I  can't.  ...  I  won't!" 

"Then  I  must!" 

If  she  had  expected  a  passionate  protest  from  Roberta  she 
was  mistaken.  A  look  of  relief  ran  over  Roberta's  face,  like 
wind  over  grass. 

"Would  you  really?"  she  asked.  "That  would  be  kind  of 
you." 

"If  you'd  rather,"  said  Guen. 


INTRUSION  219 

"Oh,  I  would,  I  would!    Will  he  believe  it?" 

"I  think  so." 

Had  he  not  foreseen  this  sort  of  thing?  "Some  impossible 
position."  His  own  words.  He  couldn't  fail  to  believe  it.  ... 

"Do  try  to  make  him.  I  wouldn't  like  him  to  think  that 
of  me.  I  wouldn't  like  anybody  to.  I'm  not  that  sort.  You 
don't  think  so,  do  you?" 

"Of  course  I  don't.  I  think  you're  a  very  stupid  little 
person  and  that  what  you  really  want  is  a  good  whipping — and 
some  hot  milk." 

A  streak  of  pity  flashed  zigzag  through  the  enormous  con- 
tempt that  filled  Guen's  mind.  You  couldn't  help  being  sorry 
for  anyone  quite  so  vain  as  all  that.  She  kissed  Roberta  and 
went  out  to  get  the  milk. 

And  Roberta,  having  pushed  the  burden  of  her  foolishness 
on  to  somebody  else's  shoulders,  rested  content.  She  was 
beginning  to  feel  better  and  her  beauty  emerged  slowly  from 
behind  the  cloud  of  her  sudden  indisposition.  It  was  silly  of 
her  to  faint  like  that.  But  she  had  been  frightened  to  death, 
what  with  one  and  the  other.  .  .  .  And  that  lie  about  being 
at  Tommy's  was  so  silly.  She  ought  to  have  done  better  than 
that.  A  theatre  would  have  sounded,  at  that  hour,  so  much 
more  plausible.  Then  nobody  would  have  known.  She  could 
have  kept  it  to  herself.  As  it  was  she  had  only  herself  to 
blame.  And  Guen  would  tell  Allan.  She  breathed  deeply  at 
that,  with  relief.  Guen  would  make  him  believe  she  was 
telling  the  truth.  For  she  was;  she  hadn't  done  anything 
"wrong,"  but  she  would  never  trust  any  man  again.  Men 
were  "beastly."  Allan  was  an  exception,  but  Allan  only  proved 
that  you  couldn't  have  it  both  ways.  When  they  weren't 
beastly  they  were  dull.  Certainly  Allan  was  dull.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  fault  of  the  Comet;  but,  too,  it  was  the  fault  of 
literature.  Allan  wrapped  all  life  up  between  the  covers  of 
a  book  and  it  annoyed  him  because  she  wouldn't  squeeze  in 
as  well.  You  either  liked  books  or  you  didn't.  And  Roberta 
didn't.  She  wasn't  "lit'ry."  (Even  now,  to  herself,  she 
pronounced  it  like  that.) 

So,  along  the  pleasant  maze  of  her  own  littleness,  Roberta 
moved  again  towards  the  comfortable  thing  life  had  been 
before  that  evening.  Comfort  was  what  she  asked  of  life — 
and  pleasure.  Her  soul — what  there  was  of  it — was  made  for 


220  INTRUSION 

those  things.  Impinging  upon  reality  at  no  point  at  all,  it 
wanted  only  a  good  time  and  no  bother  and  men  whose  admira- 
tion fell  short  of  passion — impotent,  clipped,  toeing  the  line. 

She  smiled  when  Guen  came  in  with  the  milk  and  the  tiny 
soul  looked  out  of  her  eyes.  But  Guen  did  not  see  it.  Her 
vision  had  turned  inwards,  so  that  she  saw  again  that  day 
of  Roberta's  coming,  through  a  silver  mist  of  rain  .  .  .  over  a 
futurist  lawn.  And  what  came  later.  Allan  standing  there 
in  the  doorway:  Jan  dragging  Leader  back  into  the  hall; 
Roberta's  laugh,  the  vivid  look  of  her  and  what  she  said. 
"That's  a  queer  name  for  a  dog.  .  .  ."  Allan,  amazingly 
social,  moved  to  explain  .  .  .  and  later  biting  their  heads  off, 
because  they  "discussed"  Roberta.  "For  God's  sake  leave  her 
alone!" 

And  they  had  put  it  on  to  the  Comet — had  not  understood 
that  there,  at  the  very  first  glance,  Allan  had  spread  his  dreams 
beneath  Roberta's  feet.  Perhaps  he  had  thought  she  would 
tread  softly  because  of  them.  But  Roberta  had  not  trodden 
softly.  Nobody  but  Allan  would  ever  have  supposed  that  she 
would. 


It  was  Guen  who  rose  the  next  morning  and  prepared  break- 
fast. Roberta  had  hers  in  bed.  Guen,  too,  was  responsible 
for  that.  She  wanted  to  talk  to  Allan. 

Allan,  however,  when  he  came,  did  not  show  any  great 
readiness  to  talk  or  to  be  talked  to,  and  an  abysmal  gloom 
descended  upon  Guen  whilst  the  porridge  stage  was  reached 
and  passed.  She  felt  that  Allan  resented  her  appearance  at 
his  breakfast-table;  resented  the  accident  which  had  landed 
her  there  in  the  middle  of  things  after  all  his  efforts  to  keep 
her  out  of  them  altogether.  It  seemed  to  her  that  she  spent 
an  outrageous  part  of  her  life  in  straightening  out  difficult 
situations — or  in  attempting  to  straighten  them  out,  for  always 
they  proved  too  much  for  her.  The  thing  which,  on  paper, 
she  could  do  so  well,  she  could  not  in  real  life  manage  at  all. 
This  morning  she  had  not  the  faintest  idea  how  she  might 
begin  to  tell  Allan  this  thing  she  had  undertaken;  this  recital 
of  Roberta's  achievement  of  Allan's  "impossible  position."  And 
she  resented  the  fact  that  upstairs  Roberta  sat  up  in  bed  in 


INTRUSION  221 

a  blue  dressing-jacket  and  enjoyed  her  breakfast.  Guen  was 
certainly  not  enjoying  hers,  though  she  made  a  pretence  of 
appetite  while  she  told  Allan  the  sordid  little  story  she  had 
promised  Roberta  to  pass  on.  Allan  said  nothing  till  she  had 
finished,  then  he  pushed  back  his  chair  and  got  up. 

"I  see,"  he  said.  "I'm  to  believe,  am  I,  that  Roberta  (hav- 
ing given  me  her  promise  not  to  see  Rayne  again!)  went  to 
his  rooms  under  an  assurance  that  Tommy  Carew  was  to  be 
there,  whereas,  in  fact,  Tommy  was  getting  very  drunk  some- 
where else,  as  Rayne  (and  Roberta)  probably  knew  quite  well. 
Further,  I'm  asked  to  believe  that  she'd  never  been  to  his 
rooms  before  except  in  the  company  of  this  Carew  creature; 
that,  until  this  evening,  Rayne  had  always  behaved  as  a  'per- 
fect gentleman,'  but  that,  finding  himself  alone  with  her,  for 
this  first  occasion,  he  made  her  certain  proposals  which  took 
her  completely  by  surprise;  that  she  repulsed  him  with  scorn 
and  fled.  That's  the  story,  isn't  it?" 

"Substantially,"  said  Guen. 

"Very  well,  I  may  as  well  say  quite  frankly  that  I  don't 
believe  it.  But  as  a  story  I  admire  it." 

"But  it's  exactly  the  sort  of  scrape  Roberta'd  be  certain, 
sooner  or  later,  to  land  herself  into.  You  said  so  yourself  only 
last  night."  Amazement  tangled  up  Guen's  thought.  She 
had  expected  anger;  she  had  not  expected  this — this  stagger- 
ing, unqualified  disbelief,  this  quiet  scorn  that  put  an  edge  on 
his  words. 

Allan  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  began  to  hunt  for  some- 
thing in  the  leather  case  he  had  withdrawn  from  his  pocket. 

"Last  night!"  he  said.  "Oh,  I'd  have  believed  your  story 
this  time  yesterday.  It's  surprising  what  a  lot  you  can  learn 
in  a  night.  I'm  willing  to  grant  you  one  thing — that  Roberta 
hasn't  gone  the  whole  hog;  that  she  hasn't — to  use  the  damnable 
pErase — 'betrayed'  me  to  this  Rayne  creature.  But  that,  some- 
how, doesn't  seem  half  so  important  as  it  ought  to  be.  She 
wouldn't  give  herself  to  another  man,  but  she'll  give  him  a 
good  deal  else.  Encouragement,  for  one  thing.  .  .  ." 

"You  think  she  has  encouraged  this  man  Rayne?" 

"I  don't  think.  I  know.  Roberta's  virtue  is  coldness.  Thus 
far  and  no  farther.  .  .  ." 

Guen  was  dumbfounded — not  so  much  by  what  he  said  as 
by  the  air  of  certainty  with  which  he  said  it.  It  was  as  if,  in 


222  INTRUSION 

the  night,  he  had  pulled  open  the  door  of  Roberta's  little 
soul  and  looked  in.  He  took  something  from  his  pocket-book 
and  threw  it  down  on  the  table.  "Look  at  that,"  he  said. 
Guen  picked  it  up  and  saw  that  it  was  a  photograph  of  Roberta. 
It  conveyed  nothing  to  her.  As  a  photograph  it  was  excellent. 
It  showed  the  delicate  line  of  Roberta's  profile  and  the  half 
of  a  rounded  shoulder  from  which  the  white  frock  had  slipped 
down. 

"Here's  another!"  said  Allan. 

Guen  looked  at  that,  too;  but  her  face  said  quite  plainly 
that  she  could  not  see  why  Allan  thought  either  of  them  so 
important.  After  all,  Roberta  was  a  professional  photographer's 
model. 

"Look  on  the  back!"  said  Allan. 

Guen  looked.  On  both  was  written,  in  a  scrawling,  mascu- 
line hand,  "In  memory  of  a  very  pleasant  evening,  stolen, 
Thursday,  December  llth,  1919.  D.R." 

A  glimmer  of  understanding  came  to  Guen. 

"Who  took  these?"  she  said. 

"Rayne.  He's  initialled  his  beautiful  inscription.  And 
notice  the  date." 

"December  llth.     Why,  that's  Roberta's  birthday." 

"Precisely.  That  fixes  it.  ...  I'd  come  home  early  to  take 
her  to  a  theatre  and  we  quarrelled.  ...  I  found  her  out  in  some 
stupid  lie  and  she  angered  me  by  sticking  to  it.  I  refused 
to  go  and  she  went  off  somewhere  by  herself.  The  next 
morning  she  told  me  she'd  been  giving  Rayne  the  sitting  he'd 
been  bothering  her  for  and  that  Tommy  Carew  was  there  all 
the  time.  A  carefully  selected  set  of  proofs  was  sent  me  a  day 
or  so  later:  I  needn't  say  that  it  didn't  include  these  two. 
Those  I  found  last  night  in  an  old  handbag  of  Roberta's.  .  .  . 
Oh,  it's  no  good  talking  about  that.  It  was  just  plain  spying. 
I  had  to  find  out.  ...  I  can't  explain.  .  .  ." 

How  explain  that  last  night  he  had  hated  Roberta  in  that 
sudden  frantic  way  he  had  hated  her  that  night  of  her  birth- 
day; that  upstairs  in  his  room  while  she  slept  peacefully  at 
Guen's  side,  he  had  been  torn,  brutally,  as  he  had  never  been 
torn  before,  by  suspicion  and  despair?  How  explain,  ever, 
that  one  moment  of  devastating  insight;  that  stream  of  amazing 
comprehension  over  which  the  wrack  of  his  dreams  went  riding? 

Guen  said   nothing,   only  put  the  photographs   down   and 


INTRUSION  223 

pushed  them  along  the  table  to  Allan,  who  picked  them  up 
and  put  them  back  into  his  pocket-book. 

"There  were  other  things,"  he  said.     "Letters.  .  .  ." 

"Roberta's?" 

"Miss  Carew's,  mostly,  but  there  was  one  of  Roberta's  to 
her — unfinished — and  several  from  Rayne,  addressed  to  her 
c/o  Miss  Carew." 

"You  read  them?" 

"I  told  you.  ...  I  was  spying.  I  had  to  know  .  .  .  for 
certain  .  .  .  the  things  you've  always  known." 

And  again  the  conviction  came  to  her  that  Allan  resented 
her  presence;  not  because  she  was  an  intruder,  but  because 
she  could  say,  "I  told  you  so!"  That  she  would  not  say  it, 
that  she  was  very  far  from  saying  it,  was  not  likely,  just  then, 
to  affect  Allan.  She  made  a  little  moue  of  distaste  at  the  trick 
fate  had  played  her  again.  Her  courage  drooped  as  it  had 
drooped  in  that  pink  drawing-room  at  Parson's  Green;  but 
this  time  her  pride  did  not  rise  to  reinforce  it.  Amid  these 
ruins  of  Allan's  dreams  pride  had  no  place.  Utterly  crushed 
she  sat  there,  overwhelmed  by  her  hatred  of  the  sordid  and 
hating  herself  because  it  affected  her  like  that.  .  .  . 

"At  least  we  shan't — you  and  I — have  to  pretend  any 
longer.  .  .  .  That's  something,  I  suppose." 

She  started.     "How  long  have  you  been  pretending?" 

"That  Roberta  was  straight?  Oh,  always — though  I  didn't 
realise  it  till  last  night.  I  knew  there'd  been  men;  young 
Ancell — Jan.  (Did  you  ever  guess  that?)  Oh,  she  was  virtu- 
ous enough,  if  it  comes  to  that.  Men,  to  her,  never  meant 
anything  but  theatres,  presents  .  .  .  the  possibility  of  marriage. 
If  I  ever  doubted  it  marriage  reassured  me.  Lord,  it's  funny 
what  a  lot  marriage  teaches  you." 

He  paused,  as  if  to  look  back  upon  the  lessons  he  had  learned 
at  the  hands  of  matrimony,  then  went  on. 

"It  might  have  been  all  right  if  I'd  had  plenty  of  money. 
I  might  then  have  got  faithfulness  .  .  .  spiritual  faithfulness. 
...  I  mean  I  might  have  been  the  last  of  the  procession.  God 
knows.  .  .  .  Even  Roberta  had  her  price,  I  suppose.  I  didn't 
reach  it.  ...  So  she  went  back  to  the  old  game.  ...  If 
Rayne  hadn't  turned  up  it  would  have  been  someone  else. 
Only  ...  I  could  have  forgiven  her  if  she'd  left  Martyn 
alone.  ..." 


224  INTRUSION 

"But  you  can't  blame  her  because  Martyn  fell  in  love  with 
her." 

"I  don't.  But  I  blame  her  for  helping  him;  for  boasting 
about  it,  for  trying  to  keep  him  hanging  about  her  when  she 
knew  what  had  happened;  for  blackening  his  character  to 
me.  .  .  .  She  gave  me  a  pretty  account  of  the  story:  the  one 
that  emerges  from  her  own  handwriting  is  a  good  deal  less 
pretty,  but  stamped  with  truth.  And  it  wasn't  as  if  she  cared 
tuppence  about  Martyn:  one  could  forgive  the  big  thing  so 
much  more  easily.  There's  nothing  'big'  about  Roberta:  she 
hasn't  an  ounce  of  real  passion,  but  finds  other  people's  useful. 
It  flatters  her  to  rouse  it:  to  her  it's  a  sauce  piquante  to  life.  .  .  . 
She  writes  to  this  Carew  girl  that  she  could  have  married  Mar- 
tyn as  easily  as  lifting  her  little  finger  if  she'd  met  him  in 
time !  And  then  a  lot  of  blather  about  masculine  morality.  .  .  . 
It  makes  me  sick!" 

He  began  to  talk  with  passion  of  the  "technical  morality"  of 
the  "modern  girl." 

"Roberta  isn't  'modern,' "  Guen  said  when  he  had  finished, 
"She's  as  old  as  time.  What  you  call  the  technical  morality 
of  the  modern  girl  is  the  technical  morality  of  the  same  sort 
of  girl  throughout  the  ages.  Only  nowadays  you  see  it  more 
clearly:  she  doesn't  need  to  hide  it  so  carefully." 

She  paused,  but  Allan  said  nothing,  nor  looked  at  her.  She 
went  on. 

"Can  you  manage  here  alone  for  a  bit?  If  so,  I'll  take 
Roberta  down  to  Green  Hedges  for  a  couple  of  weeks.  You 
say  she  hasn't  been  very  fit.  That'll  do  as  an  excuse." 

Anything  would  do  as  an  excuse,  Allan  told  her.  He  wanted, 
he  said,  to  get  away  somewhere  alone — to  think  things  out. 

"Are  you  going  up  to  see  her?" 

"I  can't  ...  I  simply  can't  see  her — until  I've  grown  a 
pachyderm.  Even  now,  if  I  saw  her,  she'd  get  through  to 
me." 

Her  queer  fastidious  look  hovered  for  a  second  over  Guen's 
drawn  face. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "what  to  say  to  you." 

The  instant  flash  of  tenderness  on  her  face  as  she  spoke  hurt 
him.  But  he  went  on  smoking  as  if  it  did  nothing  of  the  sort. 

"There  isn't  anything  to  say,  is  there?"  he  said  presently. 

"Nothing,"  said  Guen,  "except  this.     It  is  true,  you  know, 


INTRUSION  225 

that  Roberta  wants  looking  after.  I  think  she'll  always  want 
looking  after." 

"And  that's  to  be  my  job,  is  it?" 

"You  took  it  on,  dear.  .  .  ." 

"I  know.  But  one  grows  tired.  Besides  .  .  ."  He  pulled 
himself  up  and  tossed  his  half-smoked  cigarette  into  the  fire. 
Somehow,  the  gesture  with  which  he  did  it,  far  more  than  the 
thing  he  said,  showed  her  the  truth.  Also  it  showed  her  the 
thing  he  left  unsaid  .  .  .  that  it  wasn't,  quite,  this  job  he  had 
taken  on.  .  .  .  Allan  had  never  been  static,  but  his  moving  on 
this  time  was  astounding.  It  left  Guen  breathless;  for  the 
Allan  who  knew  all  this  was  a  very  different  person  from  the 
Allan  who  had  married  Roberta.  Yet,  in  a  sense,  it  was  still 
unbelievable  that  he  who  had  seen  so  little  before  should  see 
so  much  now,  though  Guen  knew  it  was  not  what  he  had  dis- 
covered last  night  that  counted,  but  only  that  it  had  revealed 
so  much  that  had  gone  before — that  he'd  seen  and  not  under- 
stood. In  one  blinding  flash,  that  had  lit  up  the  past,  present 
and  future,  he  had  seen  what  Guen  had  always  known;  that 
you  couldn't  mould  Roberta;  that  there  was  nothing  to  mould. 
She  was  merely  a  beautiful  shell  that  cracked  if  you  came 
too  near  it  with  the  breath  of  passion  or  of  truth.  For  that 
one  brief  moment,  even  as  Martyn  had  done,  Allan  had  seen 
right  through  her.  .  .  . 

The  last  thing  he  said  to  her  stayed  in  her  mind. 

"Our  secret,  Guen.  .  .  .  Another  skeleton  in  the  cupboard." 

And  her  reply.  "Two  of  them.  As  a  family,  we're  over- 
doing it  a  bit,  aren't  we?" 

Her  sense  of  humour  had  come  to  her  rescue:  it  reached  out 
and  rapped  Fate,  feebly,  over  the  knuckles. 


When  Allan  had  let  himself  out  into  the  street  Guen  sat 
for  some  time  before  Roberta's  coffee-pot  and  stared  out  through 
the  window  at  the  beautiful  day  that  was  climbing  already 
out  of  the  early  morning  mist.  She  tried  to  think,  but  her 
thoughts  were  not  very  useful:  they  seemed  but  to  lead  her 
to  that  cupboard  into  which  they'd  bundled  their  skeleton 
and  to  leave  her  there.  She  wished  she  knew  just  what  Allan 
was  going  to  do:  if  he  was  really  going  to  lock  the  cupboard, 


226  INTRUSION 

and,  turning  his  back  upon  it,  go  on  as  before,  with  nobody 
any  the  wiser,  save  only  themselves?  Did  she  want  that? 
She  didn't  know.  She  couldn't  bear  to  think  of  it:  couldn't 
bear  to  think  of  Allan  going  on  with  a  thing  from  which  the 
last  red  drop  of  happiness  had  ebbed  out,  into  which  had 
flowed  intrigue  and  suspicion.  Guen  envisaged  that  with 
loathing,  remembering  again  that  little  house  at  Parson's  Green 
and  the  face  of  the  man  who  had  shown  her  out  of  it. 

Suddenly  she  pushed  back  her  chair,  rose  and  went  upstairs 
to  Roberta. 

And  to  Roberta  had  been  given,  amid  so  much  else,  the 
delightful  gift  of  looking  lovely  in  the  morning.  She  looked 
so  now  and  was  aware  of  it. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "is  it  all  right?"  "All  right  for  me,"  she 
meant,  as  Guen  seemed  to  know. 

"I  think  so,"  she  said,  "but  I  want  you  to  come  down  to 
Green  Hedges  with  me  this  afternoon  for  a  week  or  so.  You 
want  a  holiday  and  it'll  give  Allan  time  to  get  over  things." 

"Allan!  I  like  that!"  said  Roberta.  "It's  me,  I  should 
have  thought,  that  wants  time  to  'get  over'  things." 

"Well,  you  shall  have  it.  ...  Do  you  feel  well  enough  to 
get  up  now  and  help  me  wrestle  with  the  chores?  I've  a  man 
to  see  at  twelve  o'clock.  .  .  .  You'd  better  meet  me  somewhere 
for  lunch  and  we'll  catch  the  three-five  down." 

"All  right,"  said  Roberta.  "But  I  say,  Guen,  do  tell  me. 
Is  Allan  awfully  wild  with  me?  He  didn't  come  up.  .  .  ." 

"I  think  he's  very  tired  and  disheartened." 

"Oh,  Lord!     Is  that  all?" 

"Isn't  that  a-good  deal?" 

"Not  for  Allan.  He's  always  tired  and  disheartened  about 
something.  Ted  up'  I  call  it.  Allan's  one  of  those  people 
who  want  to  alter  everything — and  everybody.  The  world 
isn't  a  bit  as  he  wants  it.  Most  of  the  people  in  it  are  wrong, 
of  course,  and  the  Government's  wrong  and  everybody  reads 
the  wrong  books;  or  the  right  books  for  the  wrong  reasons — 
like  me.  And  the  Comet's  wrong  and  something  he  calls  the 
'system,'  and  me.  Me  most  of  all,  I  shouldn't  wonder.  He 
tries  hard  to  alter  me.  Wants  to  make  me  lit'ry  and  all  that. 
So  silly,  isn't  it?" 

"I  suppose  it  is,"  Guen  said,  "because  you  can't  be  altered, 
can  you?" 


INTRUSION  227 

"Not  much.  Besides,  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a  world, 
doesn't  it?" 

"So  they  say,"  said  Guen,  rather  as  if  she  thought  there 
were  some  "sorts"  the  world  could  very  well  do  without. 

"I  say,  you  do  seern  depressed!"  Roberta  told  her.  "What's 
up?  You're  not  just  having  me  on,  are  you?  It  is  all  right, 
isn't  it?" 

"About  Allan?  It  will  be,"  said  Guen,  "after  a  little." 
("Our  secret  "  he  had  said.) 

Roberta  frowned,  and  getting  out  of  bed  sat  on  its  edge. 
She  took  up  her  dressing-gown  from  the  bed  rail  and  sat  there 
holding  it  crushed  up  against  her. 

"But  he  believed  what  I  said,  didn't  he?" 

"In  the  main." 

The  beauty  of  her  sitting  there  with  that  blue  thing  crushed 
up  against  her  white  skin  was  extraordinary.  Looking  at  her 
Guen  remembered  something  Allan  had  said:  "I  haven't  yet 
grown  a  pachyderm  .  .  .  she  can  get  at  me  still  sometimes.  .  .  ." 
She  could  "get"  at  anybody,  Guen  thought,  a  little  bitterly. 
She  could  play,  in  excelsis,  did  she  desire,  the  role  of  the 
martyred  wife.  Candour  and  innocence  looked  out  of  her 
eyes — and  a  soul.  And  she  wasn't  candid  and  she  possessed 
neither  innocence  nor  soul.  But  not  one  man  in  a  thousand 
would  believe  it. 

"He  didn't  think  I'd  done  anything  wrong,  did  he,  Guen?" 

"Not  in  the  way  you  mean." 

"Well,  good  heavens,  what  other  way  is  there?" 

"Allan  seemed  to  think  there  are  several." 

"You  mean  ...  he  thinks  I  asked  for  it ...  that  I  led  Rayne 
on?" 

"I'm  afraid  he  does!"  Guen  said.  "And  there  were  two 
photographs  .  .  .  things  you  didn't  mean  him  to  see,  and 
some  letters.  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  Lord!"  said  Roberta.  "Fancy  spying  on  me  like  that! 
I  think  men  are  beastly.  I  do  reely.  So's  life.  .  .  .  Perfectly 
beastly." 

She  wrinkled  her  brows  with  disgust,  and  standing  up  began 
to  draw  the  blue  dressing-gown  about  her.  She  did  it  with  an 
air  of  fastidious  distaste,  as  if  with  the  act  she  folded  herself 
away  from  the  essential  interminable  "beastliness"  of  men  and 
things. 


CHAPTER    TEN 


ALLAN'S  interview  with  Douglas  Rayne  accounted,  that 
same  morning,  for  his  luncheon  hour.  He  had  not 
meant  to  see  him;  even  now  it  wasn't  Guen's,  "I  think 
you  ought  to  see  this  man"  that  sent  him  along  to  the  address 
he  had  found  there  among  Roberta's  letters.  It  wasn't  that 
he  went  to  defend  his  "honour"  (or  did  he  mean  Roberta's? 
Rubbish!  She  hadn't  any,  and  in  a  Court  of  Law  she  would 
be  held  to  have  kept  his  undefiled!)  It  was  for  no  such 
reason  as  this  that  he  went  down  to  Victoria  from  the  City: 
scarcely,  even,  was  it  Rayne  he  went  to  see;  but  Roberta — 
the  real  Roberta  who  existed  somewhere  beneath  all  the  dreams 
he  had  woven  about  her;  all  the  wrappings  of  protection  and 
illusion  in  which,  as  a  natural  integument,  he  had  enveloped 
her.  The  interview  with  Rayne  might  be  illuminative;  might 
fill  in  the  weak  places  in  the  case  he  had  even  now  against  her. 
He  was  driven  by  a  passion  the  like  of  which  had  never  pos- 
sessed him  before:  the  passion  to  know  all  there  was  to  know; 
to  have  done  with  his  dreams  and  wrappings  for  ever.  .  .  . 

Even  so  he  had  not  guessed  how  much  it  would  hurt.  .  .  . 
It  was  an  extremely  painful  interview,  not  alone  for  Rayne, 
who  found  it  necessary  to  see  a  dentist  before  he  departed 
for  Paris;  but  for  Allan,  in  whom  something  hideously  definite 
and  irrevocable  seemed  to  be  happening  all  the  time.  But 
when  it  was  over,  when  he  had  closed  Mr.  Rayne's  door  on 
Mr.  Rayne's  curses  and  threats  of  the  law,  a  sense  of  the 
humour  of  the  situation  descended  upon  him.  It  supported 
him  all  the  way  back  to  the  office,  and  it  did  not  leave  him 
until  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  when  a  hideous  faintness 
seized  him.  Nothing  then  was  amusing  any  longer.  His 
chief  was  good-natured  about  it.  "You'd  better  go  and  sit 
under  the  trees  somewhere,"  he  said  to  Allan,  and,  to  some- 

228 


INTRUSION  229 

one  else,  "These  poor  chaps!  France  seems  to  have  crocked 
'em  up!  Not  the  same,  half  of 'em!" 

Allan  went  out  and  rode  on  a  bus  down  the  Strand.  The 
afternoon  was  beautiful.  The  morning's  mist  had  rolled  back 
from  a  world  of  quiet  winter  trees  and  brooding  shadows. 
A  red  sun  burned  low  in  the  sky,  shedding  a  warm  glow  over 
the  London  afternoon,  making  even  the  City,  which  Allan 
detested,  a  thing  of  strange  beauty. 

But  Allan  was  not  looking  at  the  afternoon,  nor  seeing  the 
queer  things  the  winter  sun  was  doing  to  the  Temple  of 
Mammon.  From  the  top  of  his  bus  he  gazed  down  upon  this 
carnal  life  of  the  street  as  upon  a  thing  that  raised  its  head 
above  a  whirlpool  of  intrigue  and  iniquity,  having  about  it 
the  fierceness  and  obscenity  of  the  thing  long  submerged.  For 
Allan  London  had  become  a  place  of  Douglas  Raynes,  of  men, 
suave  and  polished,  yet  furtive-eyed,  loose-lipped;  and  of 
women  who  divided  easily  into  two  groups — the  anaemic,  over- 
worked and  underpaid,  and  the  over-dressed,  who  lived  by  their 
power  of  inflaming  men,  within  the  bounds  of  marriage  or 
without.  It  made  no  difference. 

At  Charing  Cross  a  girl  with  hair  bright  like  an  aureole 
beneath  a  coquettish  hat  that  sported  an  egret's  feather  flitted 
across  the  road  and  captured  Allan's  gaze.  There  was  about 
her  all  the  impudence  and  self-consciousness  of  youth  and 
beauty,  and  the  gaze  of  the  street,  as  impudent  as  she,  followed 
her  as  she  went.  Allan's  mouth  twisted  into  a  reluctant  smile 
because  she  had  Roberta's  carriage  and  flaming  hair;  because 
she  wore  silk  stockings  and  high-heeled  shoes  with  a  coat  of 
fur,  and  because,  outside  the  Bureau  de  Change,  she  met  a 
colourful  youth  who  carried  chocolates  in  a  cardboard  box  and 
violets  in  white  paper! 

Between  them  Roberta  and  Rayne  had  cheapened  the  uni- 
verse. .  .  .  And  it  wasn't  only  that.  Riding  down  to  Kew, 
Allan  was  stunned  by  the  knowledge  that  his  interview  with 
Rayne  had  in  some  queer  fashion  used  up  the  last  ounce  of  that 
protective  feeling  Roberta  had  aroused  in  him,  as  if,  though 
Rayne  had  been  thrashed,  something  had  happened  to  his 
feeling  for  Roberta  in  the  process.  It  lay  there  now  at  his  feet, 
withered  and  dead,  inspiring  not  pity,  not  sorrow,  not  regret, 
but  only  a  vague  wonderment  that  it  should  ever  have  existed 
at  all.  ' 


230  INTRUSION 


Allan  spent  his  week-end  walking  in  the  Chilterns  and  found 
it  a  thing  of  surprising  emotions.  Out  of  them,  slowly  and 
with  pain,  emerged  the  conviction  that  never  again  could  he 
bear  to  live  under  the  same  roof  with  Roberta.  From  this 
conviction  he  stood  away  deliberately,  considering  it  with  a 
feeling  of  chill  detachment,  as  though  it  were  somebody  else's 
conviction,  somebody  else's  emotions,  somebody  else's  thoughts. 
And  somebody  else's  wife.  .  .  . 

He  saw  Roberta  as,  during  those  few  months  of  marriage, 
she  had  slowly  but  certainly  revealed  herself.  It  wasn't  only 
that  she  was  vain  and  ignorant;  not  only  that  she  was  ego- 
tistical and  stupid;  but  that  she  was  these  things  incurably. 
You  couldn't  alter  her:  she  was  shallow  and  trivial;  her  very 
vices  were  paltry.  She  had  neither  desire  nor  courage — not 
even  enough  to  allow  her  to  be  just  a  little  wicked:  she 
remained  paltry  and  venal;  thin — thin  to  the  soul — eternally 
hemmed  in  by  her  technical  morality.  Garrisoned.  ...  It 
was  that  Allan  hated  most.  He  despised  her  because  of  it; 
could  more  easily  have  forgiven  and  forgotten  some  great  wrong 
she  had  done  him.  Or  so  it  seemed  to  him  now. 

But  here,  as  elsewhere,  her  technical  morality  was  her 
defence  .  .  .  He  saw  it  variously  as  her  shield  and  buckler,  as 
the  bond  which  held  her  still  to  him.  ...  By  virtue  of  it  shi 
remained  his  wife,  whether  the  same  roof  sheltered  them  or 
not.  He  had  no  case,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  which  had  no 
sympathy  for  mental  states  or  moral  finesse,  but  saw  things  in 
black  and  white  against  an  unshifting  background  of  property. 
Property  in  flesh  and  blood.  The  law  was  concerned  with  the 
physical,  and  physically  Roberta  had  not  offended.  She  had 
not  "given"  herself  or  "sold"  herself  to  any  other  man.  What 
had  he,  the  man  in  possession,  to  complain  of?  He  turned 
in  his  gnawing  misery,  shrugging  his  shoulders  in  the  face  of 
the  law.  It  was  absurd  that  divorce  should  be  concerned  not 
with  spiritual,  but  with  physical  deflection.  .  .  .  Milton,  away 
there  in  his  bleak  century,  had  seen  that  And  people  were 
still  arguing  about  it.  A  slow  world. 

Darkness  dropped  fast.  The  road  hung  like  a  silver  ribbon 
beneath  the  red-browns  and  purples  of  the  winter  trees.  Steep 
banks  shut  it  in;  a  pale  moon  shone  down  upon  it.  To  Allan 


INTRUSION  231 

there  came  the  sense  of  walking  within  the  frame  of  some 
delicate  picture,  and  he  strode  faster  as  if  to  get  out  of  it. 

A  bitter  disgust  welled  up  within  him.  Love!  That  love! 
He  was  overwhelmed  with  a  sense  of  failure — not  Roberta's, 
but  his.  Mixed  up  with  his  anger,  his  disillusion  and  his  dis- 
gust he  recognised  a  grain — a  very  tiny  grain — of  pity.  He 
ought  not  to  have  married  Roberta:  he  could  give  her — had 
given  her — none  of  the  things  she  wanted,  none  of  the  things 
which  for  her  made  life  endurable.  He  did  not  argue  about 
her  standards:  he  recognised  them  as  paltry  and  left  it  at 
that;  but  the  fact  remained.  Had  he  been  able  to  give  her 
more  of  the  things  she  wanted  she  might  not  have  gone  seeking 
them  in  dubious  fashion.  God  alone  knew!  Hers  was  a 
little  soul  that  might  yet  have  flourished  and  grown  fat  in  pros- 
perity: in  poverty  its  bones  stuck  out  incredibly.  Morality  for 
one  half  the  world,  perhaps,  is  only  a  matter  of  money: 
Roberta  had  her  price,  and  most  certainly  Allan  had  not 
attained  to  it. 

The  path  turned  abruptly  and  ran  through  the  broad  centre 
of  a  little  wood.  Allan  strode  on,  assurance  beating  into  him. 
This  was  the  end.  It  should  not,  this  passionate  intrusion, 
become  permanent.  It  made  it  no  better  to  call  it  marriage. 
Whatever  you  called  it  you  couldn't  make  it  anything  else.  A 
passionate  intrusion.  He  wanted  here,  now  and  for  ever,  to 
put  an  end  to  it  all — had  finished  hunting  for  motives  and 
dodging  regrets.  Truth  stared  at  him.  He  had  married 
Roberta  because  he  wanted  her,  hiding  the  real  motive  under 
a  shoal  of  others  less  personal,  less  immediate,  as  Guen  had 
known  all  the  time.  And  Roberta  had  never  loved  him — in 
that  way  or  any  other.  She  would  not  mind  that  he  put  an 
end  to  it,  provided  she  did  not  suffer  materially.  She  would, 
he  thought,  wear  her  martyr's  crown  with  becoming  grace  and 
dignity.  Not  a  man,  hearing  the  story,  but  would  admire  and 
pity  her.  . .  . 

Presently  he  stopped,  took  off  his  hat  and  leaned  heavily 
against  the  trunk  of  a  tree.  It  was  as  if  he  had  come  suddenly 
to  the  end  of  life:  there  was  nothing  beyond,  and  what  was 
behind  no  longer  mattered.  It  never  had  mattered:  nothing 
that  had  ever  happened  to  him  and  Roberta  mattered  at  all; 
there  was  no  meaning  to  any  of  it.  He  saw  that,  felt  it,  knew 
it  for  truth.  The  knowledge  didn't  even  hurt.  He  was  numb, 


232  INTRUSION 

bereft  utterly  of  emotion.  He  leaned  there  against  the  tree 
trunk,  looking  at  truth — unthrilled  by  the  vision.  It  simply 
•didn't  matter,  now. 

On  the  edge  of  the  little  wood  it  was  very  quiet.  The  tran- 
quillity of  the  night  was  all  about  him  and  the  scent,  sweeter 
than  all  other,  of  moist  earth.  Gradually  the  stillness  built 
itself  up  around  him,  like  a  wall.  He  forgot  he  stood  but  a 
few  yards  from  the  public  footpath:  nor  realised  how  long  he 
stood  there  motionless:  he  knew  nothing  save  that  slowly,  and 
with  intolerable  pain,  feeling  came  back  to  him.  Things  did 
matter:  these  things  which  had  happened  to  him  and  to 
Roberta  mattered  horribly.  Deep  down  within  him  something 
small  and  very  human  cried  pitifully  for  the  beauty  it 
remembered. 

But  one  did  not  remember  for  ever.  You  did  forget:  no 
use  pretending.  Things  you  thought  you'd  go  to  the  grave 
remembering,  you  forgot.  Cruel  things  that  clung  and  hurt 
and  drew  blood:  you  forgot  them.  Maurice  Linton — and  Mar- 
tyn.  How  often  in  the  last  few  months  had  he  remembered 
either  of  them?  Roberta  had  been  the  drug  beneath  which  the 
memory  of  them  both  had  sunk,  unprotesting,  into  slumber.  .  .  . 

How  long  before  he  should  begin  to  forget  Roberta? 


When  he  reached  home  he  wrote  to  Guen — plainly,  so  that 
she  couldn't  possibly  misunderstand.  It  was  much  more  diffi- 
cult to  write  to  Roberta,  and  eventually  he  gave  it  up,  hoping, 
perhaps,  that  Guen  would  break  the  ice.  .  .  .  But  Guen  kept 
him  waiting  a  whole  week  for  a  reply,  and  when  it  came  four 
lines  of  it  only — and  on  a  postcard !  She  was  coming  to  town 
the  next  morning.  She  told  him  where  she  intended  to  lunch 
and  asked  him  to  meet  her  there.  With  superb  indifference 
she  added,  "Please  don't  be  late.  I've  an  appointment  at  half- 
past  two." 

Allan  was  vaguely  annoyed.  A  postcard — in  reply  to  a  letter 
that  said  the  sort  of  things  his  letter  had  said.  And  cold,  calm 
mention  of  some  business  appointment!  He  felt  like  a  small 
boy  who  has  played  truant,  has  expected  condign  punishment 
and  has  been  told,  carelessly,  not  to  do  anything  so  silly 
again.  .  .  . 


INTRUSION  233 

But  he  turned  up  punctually  at  Guen's  rendezvous.  She  had 
not  arrived.  The  day  was  deplorably  wet  and  a  wind  like  a 
knife  was  abroad  ...  a  beast  of  a  day.  Allan  sat  down  at  a 
table  set  for  two  in  a  corner  and  near  to  the  fire.  The  restau- 
rant was  a  haunt  of  writing  men,  and  it  was  Fleet  Street  that 
drifted  in  through  the  door,  shaking  its  umbrella.  Two  men 
he  didn't  know  came  and  stood  by  the  fire,  warming  their  hands 
and  talking  .  .  .  gravely  assuring  each  other  that  they  really 
were  the  only  two  critics  in  London.  They  possessed,  so  they 
said,  a  definite  standard  of  criticism  and  spoke  of  it  rather  as 
a  duchess  or  a  cinema  actress  might  speak  of  a  rope  of  pearls 
which,  though  valuable,  was  always  something  of  a  responsi- 
bility. They  went  away  presently  and  sat  at  an  adjacent  table, 
and  Allan  filled  up  time  by  wondering  who  they  were.  He 
couldn't  fit  them  in.  Then  Guen  arrived  and  did  it  for  him. 
She  ordered  a  chop  with  a  crisp  decision  not  common  to  her 
sex  in  the  matter  of  food,  and  nodded  affably  to  the  Only  Two 
Critics  in  London.  Unaccountably  nervous,  Allan  began  to 
talk  of  some  book  or  other  Gore  had  sent  him  to  review  for 
Life  and  Letters.  Guen  said,  "Yes,  I  know,  it's  excellent.  But 
look  here,  Allan,  we're  not  going  to  talk  about  books.  I  want 
to  talk  to  you  about  Roberta." 

"But  surely  not  here.  We  can't  possibly  discuss  our  affairs 
here."  A  kind  of  panic  laid  hold  of  him. 

"I  fancy,"  said  Guen,  "that  there  isn't  going  to  be  very 
much — discussion." 

"You  mean  you  haven't  said  anything  to  Roberta?" 

"I've  said  a  good  deal,  but  not  about  your  letter." 

"I  see."  (All  right,  Guen  was  going  to  stand  out,  too. 
He'd  have  to  fight  single-handed.)  "I  see.  .  .  .  You've  come 
to  argue  me  out  of  it — to  make  me  see  reason.  Well,  I  may 
as  well  tell  you  frankly  I'm  not  going  to.  Not  that  sort  of 
reason,  anyway.  The  thing's  impossible.  I  thought  you'd  see 
that.  I  thought  you'd  agree  that  there's  no  sense  in  going  on 
with  a  mistake — that  it's  better  to  get  out  while  there's 
time." 

Guen  looked  at  him. 

"I  might — if  there  were  time,  but  there  isn't.  You're  three 
months  too  late." 

Allan  answered  with  an  intensity  that  surprised  himself. 


234  INTRUSION 

"Really,  Guen,  old  girl,  I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  you're 
trying  to  get  at." 

"Haven't  you?  It's  very  simple,"  Guen  said.  "You 
see  ...  you  can't  leave  Roberta  now  because — she's  going  to 
have  a  child!" 

For  a  moment  Allan  stared  at  her  in  blankest  surprise.  The 
thing  was  too  idiotic.  It  simply  couldn't  be !  He  and  Roberta 
were  not  going  to  have  any  children.  Roberta  had  decided  that 
long  ago. 

"These  things  happen  sometimes,  you  know,"  Guen  said, 
smiling  a  little,  as  though  she  divined  his  thoughts.  But  Allan 
could  find  no  words.  He  sat  there  holding  a  knife  and  fork 
in  his  hands  and  bathed  suddenly  and  dreadfully  in  emotion, 
emotion  so  keen  and  unexpected  that  it  was  like  a  knife-stab 
in  his  back.  The  blood  rushed  to  his  face,  beating  in  his  ears 
and  behind  his  eyes  that  mechanically  watched  the  efforts  of 
a  blonde  youth  at  the  next  table  to  keep  a  piece  of  pie-crust 
on  a  blue  and  white  plate.  The  moment  grew  into  an  eternity. 
He  heard  Guen  say,  "That's  why  I  didn't  answer  your  letter. 
I  wanted  to  be  sure,  and  Roberta  wouldn't  see  a  doctor." 

He  made  a  great  effort  and  spoke. 

"When?"  he  asked.  The  sound  of  his  own  voice  surprised 
him,  as  though  he  heard  it  for  the  first  time. 

"June,"  said  Guen. 

For  long  afterwards  the  word  "June"  was  associated  in 
Allan's  mind  with  the  sight  of  a  blonde  youth  struggling  with 
pie-crust  on  a  plate,  and  of  the  sheeted  rain,  white,  before  an 
ever-swinging  door. 


BOOK  III 

CHAPTER  ONE 

ROBERTA  came  home  at  the  end  of  the  week.  The 
babyish  look  had  left  her  face,  but  about  her  mouth 
was  a  look  of  sullen  sweetness  that,  except  at  rare  inter- 
vals, had  never  been  there  before.  Allan,  touched  unbeliev- 
ably by  the  sight  of  the  first  hint  of  her  impending  mother- 
hood, had  drowned  the  past  in  a  stream  of  surprising  emotion, 
in  an  overwhelming  comprehension  of  the  fact  that  his  child — 
his  child — must  be  born  properly.  Immediately,  and  with  a 
thoroughness  that  to  Guen  was  funny,  he  began  to  make  a 
fresh  lot  of  mistakes  about  Roberta.  He  hadn't  been  able  to 
alter  her;  but  Nature  would.  .  .  .  The  Roberta  who  was 
going  through — all  that — could  not  possibly  emerge  as  the 
Roberta  who  had  intended  never  to  go  through  it.  He  believed, 
as  men  will,  that  the  very  fact  of  motherhood  was  potent  for 
improvement;  that  it  could  change  a  woman's  nature:  could 
work  a  miracle  more  wonderful  than  itself.  And  Guen  did 
not  undeceive  him. 

And  yet  she  could  have  done.  She  had  only  to  hint  at  that 
hour  she  had  spent  with  Roberta  after  she  had  seen  the  doctor; 
after  doubt  was  no  longer  possible.  Guen  wasn't  likely  to 
forget  it,  but  she'd  keep  it  to  herself.  Not  that  Roberta  had 
troubled  at  the  first  to  do  that.  She  had  been  at  no  pains  to 
hide  her  chagrin,  her  fright.  .  .  . 

"Poor  kid,"  A.G.  had  said.  "If  I  were  a  woman  I'd  want 
a  thousand  down  before  I'd  consider  it!"  Guen  thought  that 
a  healthy  state  of  mind  for  a  man,  but  beneath  her  smile  she 
had  hidden  her  sense  of  soiled  and  outraged  woman's  dignity. 
One  ought  not  to  show  funk  over  one's  special  job — even  if 
one  felt  it. 

235 


236  INTRUSION 

But  at  that  moment  Roberta  was  hiding  her  funk  and  her 
smouldering  anger  beneath  this  disguise  of  sullen  sweetness. 
Her  imagination  was  not  keen  enough  to  pierce  beyond  the 
veil  of  the  months  that  still  stood  between  her  and  her  ordeal. 
She  lived  in  the  present,  in  the  Now  when  she  did  not  suffer, 
save  in  her  vanity,  to  which  her  condition  was  a  constant  goad. 
She  developed  a  distaste  for  walking  abroad;  giving  you  the 
impression  not  so  much  of  staying  in  the  house  as  of  hiding 
in  it.  She  couldn't  bear  to  be  seen. 

Yet  people  persisted  in  coming  to  see  her.  Allan's  parents, 
Pen  and  Caryl,  and  her  own  father — still  with  that  lost  air 
which  had  descended  upon  him  at  the  time  of  his  wife's  death. 
Anne  Suffield,  of  course,  was  delighted  with  Roberta,  chiefly 
because  she  was  going  to  have  a  baby  (Allan's  baby),  but  also 
because  she  was  having  it  so  soon  after  her  marriage — an 
old-fashioned  thing  to  do,  which  appealed  to  Anne  in  the  way 
things  unexpected  always  did.  Certainly  she  hadn't  expected 
this.  .  .  .  The  child  she  had  acquired  was  like  the  children 
she  had  borne — who  always  did  what  you'd  never  imagined 
they  would  do.  Even  Pen  was  surprised  into  extending  the 
boundaries  of  her  affability.  She  came  relenting,  bearing 
gifts — the  baby  clothes  Roberta  would  not  make.  She  could 
not  sew.  From  the  first  she  said  it,  and  to  the  end  she  main- 
tained it.  So  others  sewed  for  her.  The  whole  feminine 
resources  of  Adelaide  Lodge  were  laid  at  her  feet  as  a  votive 
offering.  It  gratified  even  Roberta,  who  loved  to  be  the  centre 
of  attraction  even  in  a  second-rate  show.  It  amused  her  to 
hear  John  Suffield  dilating  upon  his  mere-mannishness  and 
making  up  for  his  inability  to  sew  by  paying  for  things  which 
other  people  sewed.  Allan  had  told  her,  too,  that  his  father 
had  made  himself  financially  responsible  for  this  expensive 
business  of  birth.  Allan's  bills  were  to  be  sent  to  him.  He 
was  adamant,  insisted.  Never  was  a  baby  to  be  born  with  so 
little  expense  to  his  parents.  Never  one  born  to  such  an 
inheritance  of  clothes.  You  wished  at  times  that  it  was  you 
who  were  first  to  see  the  light  that  day  to  come  in  early 
June.  .  .  . 

It  was  Caryl  who  said  that,  turning  the  clothes  over  with  her 
hands,  a  new  wistful  expression  on  her  face.  "Wouldn't  you 
just  love  to  wear  them,  Berta?"  And  Berta  said,  "Not  par- 
ticularly, and,  anyway,  you  wouldn't  know  anything  about  it!" 


INTRUSION  237 

"I  want  to  bring  someone  to  see  you,"  Caryl  said  one  day 
towards  the  end  of  March.  It  was  very  warm  and  showery 
and  Roberta  lay  on  the  settee  in  the  window,  deep  in  an 
account  of  the  disappearance  of  Leonora  Darbey.  She  looked 
up  with  a  little  frown  at  Caryl,  who  sat  on  the  edge  of  the 
table  swinging  her  feet  and  with  much  unusual  colour  in  her 
brown  face. 

"Who?"  asked  Roberta  briefly. 

"A  friend  of  mine — Dick  Merrick." 

"Oh,  Caryl — a  man  I  don't  know!  Of  course  you 
can't  .  .  .  now!" 

Caryl  stopped  swinging  her  legs  and  stared  at  her. 

"Why  ever  not?"  she  asked. 

"Well  .  .  .  you  might  just  ask  yourself,"  Roberta  said. 

A  faint  light  dawned  on  Caryl.  "But  Dick! — Dick  isn't 
like  that!"  she  explained. 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  said  Roberta  stiffly. 

"Neither  do  I,"  said  Caryl.  But  she  tried  to  explain.  "You 
see,  Roberta,  Dick's  .  .  .  Dick's  awfully  kind  and  understand- 
ing, and  he  doesn't  care  a  bit  what  a  girl  looks  like.  .  .  .  Oh, 
that  sounds  wrong!  I  don't  mean  that  you  don't  look  nice. 
You  do.  You  look  prettier  than  ever,  somehow;  but  only  that 
you  needn't  mind  Dick.  .  .  .  Dick's  rather  a  dear." 

"Well,  he'll  keep,  I  s'pose.  ...  I  don't  want  him  here 
now.  ...  Is  it  the  man  Pen's  always  talking  about,  the  man 
you  used  to  meet  at  the  Hestons  ?  Pen  always  says  she  believes 
he's  going  to  marry  Marjorie  Heston." 

"He  isn't,"  said  Caryl.     "He's  going  to  marry  me." 

Roberta  dropped  Leonora  on  to  the  floor  and  begged  to  be 
told  all  about  it. 

"All"  was  out  of  the  question.  You  couldn't  possibly  tell 
Roberta  any  of  the  things  that  mattered.  All  that  about  Mar- 
jorie and  Dick  and  her  own  uncertainty,  perhaps;  that  day 
in  the  wood,  too.  These  things  no  longer  mattered.  She 
could  laugh  about  them  now.  But  she  didn't  laugh  about  that 
afternoon  at  Kew.  .  .  .  That  had  beauty,  intimacy:  it  lived 
inside  her  .  .  .  burnt  up  and  up  like  a  flame.  She  remembered 
it  still;  the  unexpected  meeting,  down  there  in  the  Arboretum 
amid  the  scent  of  things  that  grew;  their  steps  turning  down 
towards  the  river,  the  January  day  trembling  before  the  embrace 
of  night  and  Dick's  voice  telling  her  strange  things  about  the 


238  INTRUSION 

wild  birds  that  she  scarcely  heard  because  she  wanted  all  the 
time  to  say,  "Oh,  don't,  don't  talk!  .  .  .  Can't  you  see  I 
want  you  to  kiss  me  again?  .  .  ."  Even  now  she  remembered 
that  she  had  been  a  little  appalled  at  her  own  certainty. 

And  then,  suddenly,  the  thing  had  happened.  Dick  stopped 
talking  about  his  wild  fowl:  stopped,  too,  in  his  stride.  Caryl 
had  moved  on — was  a  step  in  front.  His  hand  on  her  arm 
brought  her  up  sharply,  drew  her  up  tightly  against  him.  She 
remembered  what  he  said.  "Do  you  want  to-  run  away — this 
time?"  And  what  she  said,  ages  afterwards:  "Oh,  Dick,  I 
thought  it  was  Marjorie!  .  .  ." 

She  couldn't  possibly  get  any  of  that  into  words,  so  she 
fobbed  off  Roberta  with  all  that  tosh  about  Marjorie  and  what 
she'd  thought  and  not  thought  and  about  the  day  in  the  wood 
and  at  the  end  of  it  she  said: 

"We  want  to  be  engaged.  Dick's  coming  to  see  father 
to-morrow.  It  sounds  dreadfully  old-fashioned,  asking  per- 
mission. But,  you  see,  I  promised  to  keep  off  that  sort  of  thing 
until  I'd  got  my  degree,  and  it's  eighteen  months  yet  before  I 
can  sit  for  my  final." 

Eighteen  months  was  an  eternity.  You  simply  had  to  have 
something  to  go  on  with.  .  .  .  They  simply  must  let  you  be 
engaged.  If  they  didn't,  it  was  going  to  interfere  horribly 
with  your  work.  Strange  how  you  knew  that.  .  .  . 

Never  for  a  moment  did  it  occur  to  Caryl  to  drop  the  idea 
of  her  degree.  She  was  in  love  with  Dick,  but  she  was  still  in 
love  with  the  idea  of  her  degree.  Sitting  there  swinging  her 
legs,  she  dragged  out  her  beliefs,  her  modern  creed — that  love 
wasn't  all.  Even  when  you  felt  like  this  it  wasn't  all.  There 
was  a  time  when  it  was  more  important  because  more  urgent 
than  anything  else,  but  that  wouldn't  last.  Presently  that 
bit  of  life  would  find  its  own  level:  it  wouldn't  obtrude.  It 
was  now — before  you  had  had  any  of  your  things,  when  you 
faced  the  idea  of  doing  without  them — that  they  turned  and 
crowded  in  upon  you.  This  was  the  price  you  paid  when  you'd 
rejected  the  older  creed,  when  you  ceased  to  believe  that  when 
you  loved  nothing  else  mattered — that  your  brain  could  run  to 
seed.  And  Caryl  knew  that  hers  couldn't.  She  did  not  believe 
that  when  a  woman  loved  she  ceased  to  belong  to  herself.  .  .  . 
This  horrible  theory  of  possession !  Never  for  a  moment  would 
Caryl  subscribe  to  it.  Yet,  being  woman,  in  love  for  the  first 


INTRUSION  239 

time  and  honest,  healthy  and  normal,  she  knew  the  urgency 
of  desire;  was  moved  thereby  to  a  sudden  startling  envy  of 
Roberta,  who  had  had  things,  who  knew.  .  .  .  Urged  to  them, 
too,  by  the  sight  of  the  pile  of  baby  clothes  at  her  side.  Not 
the  only  thing,  but  horribly  important  while  it  lasted.  She 
broke  off  the  train  of  thought. 

"Do  let  me  bring  Dick  to  see  you,  Berta." 

And  Berta  snapped  her  up.  Berta  retrieved  Leonora  from 
the  floor  and  answered,  in  a  voice  that  was  sharper  than  Caryl 
had  ever  before  heard  it: 

"My  dear  Caryl,  I  couldn't  bear  him  to  see  me  like  this.  .  .  . 
Really,  I  should  have  thought  you  would  have  understood." 

Caryl  got  off  the  table  and  came  over  to  Roberta. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry.  Please  forgive  me.  I  hadn't  any  idea 
you'd  feel  .  .  .  like  that  .  .  .  about  it." 

"Well,  I  do.  ...  It  isn't  very  nice.  You  wait  till  it  happens 
to  you!" 

The  hot  colour  sprang  to  Caryl's  cheek.  "I'm  sorry,"  she 
said  again.  "When  is  it,  Berta?" 

"June,"  Roberta  said.     "Two  months  yet" 

She  hung  on  to  that  as  'to  a  spar  in  a  rough  sea.  She  needn't 
think  about  it  yet.  Two  full  months. 

But  there  weren't.  .  .  . 

Nobody  ever  quite  knew  how  it  happened. '  Roberta  herself 
said  she  slipped  coming  downstairs.  .  .  .  Anyway,  her  child 
was  born  prematurely,  nearly  eight  full  weeks  before  she  had 
expected  it.  It  was  a  boy  and  delicate,  who  had,  the  doctor 
said,  rather  less  than  the  usual  chances  of  a  seven-months' 
child ;  chances  that  lessened  perceptibly  day  by  day  until  on  the 
fourth  it  became  apparent  he  was  doing  nothing  at  all  with 
them.  As  though  he  realised  how  seriously  he  had  incon- 
venienced his  mother,  how  little  she  wanted  him,  he  slipped 
quietly  out  of  the  world  into  which  he  had  hurried  so  indec- 
orously. 

Roberta  wept. 

But  Allan  curbed  his  disappointment,  the  pain  of  his  out- 
raged, newly  awakened  sense  of  fatherhood  upon  the  bridle 
of  his  consideration  for  Roberta.  For  he  thought  she  suffered, 
and  he  had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  shock  of  her  white  face 
on  the  pillow  when,  after  that  still,  white  night,  so  full  of 
suspense,  they  allowed  him  to  see  her.  Her  eyes  haunted  him; 


c 
£40  INTRUSION 

he  saw  in  them  not  alone  the  shadow  of  her  agony,  but  her 
implacable  resentment;  a  resentment  directed,  he  thought  then, 
against  fate  and  the  fact  that  she  had  suffered  for  nothing.  .  .  . 
It  was  some  weeks  before  he  discovered  that  even  there  he  was 
wrong. 

He  clung  at  this  point  to  his  new  colossal  mistake,  his  belief 
that  the  Roberta  who  had  suffered — that — must  be  different 
from  the  Roberta  who  had  not  meant  to  suffer  it.  % 

The  hawthorn  was  in  bloom  before  he  realised  that  she 
wasn't  .  .  .  that  she  didn't  care  that  her  child  had  died;  that 
she  was,  on  the  whole,  relieved  because  Fate  had  let  her  off — 
left  her  free. 

She  was  soon  well  again.  She  bloomed  afresh  in  the  world, 
young  as  the  spring,  and  as  beautiful.  Still  nursing  his  pathetic 
belief,  still  clutching  his  fond  delusion,  the  lover  in  Allan  came 
back  again.  The  old  ecstasy  sung  in  his  veins,  the  old  desire 
reached  out  and  stung  him.  He  wanted  her  still — even  far 
more.  He  wanted  by  his  love  to  make  up  to  her.  ...  It  wasn't 
merely  passion:  he  cared  with  an  enormous  tenderness.  .  .  . 

And  Roberta  edged  away.  When  Allan,  refusing  to  be 
snubbed,  refusing  to  understand,  blundered  after  her  she 
turned  and  rent  him. 

"I've  had  enough  of  that  side  of  life.  .  .  .  I'm  not  taking 
any  more  risks  of  that  sort,  thank  you." 

Once  again  his  dreams  came  clattering  about  his  feet.  Inward 
vision  pierced  him.  He  understood.  The  miracle  hadn't  come 
off — Roberta  wasn't  changed.  Nature,  neither,  had  been  able 
to  do  anything  with  her.  She  didn't  care  a  scrap  .  .  .  for 
him  ...  or  that  her  child  had  died.  She  cared  still  about 
nothing  and  no  one  save  herself.  The  resentment  he  had 
read  in  her  eyes,  that  smouldered  there  still,  was  directed  not 
against  fate,  not  against  the  futility  of  her  pain,  but  against  him, 
because  he  had  brought  her  to  that,  had  made  life  painful, 
"horrid."  . 


CHAPTER  TWO 


AT  first  Allan  thought  he  couldn't  bear  it:  that  he  must 
get  up  and  walk  out  of  the  house  altogether  and  never 
come  back.  But  presently  he  knew  that  he  wouldn't 
do  that  because  he  would  be  only  more  miserable  away  from 
Roberta  than  he  was  with  her.  In  the  way  that  mattered,  the 
real,  essential  way,  it  was  true  he  did  not  care  for  Roberta. 
But  in  the  way  that  mattered  only  because  it  hurt,  because 
he  couldn't  escape  from  it,  he  certainly  went  on  caring.  It 
came  to  him  that  it  was  a  dreadful  thing  to  be  "in  love"  without 
loving;  it  meant  the  complete  subjection  of  mind  to  body. 
And  yet,  not  quite  perhaps — for  at  least  Allan  recognised  his 
malady.  If  he  was  disgusted  he  was  also,  in  a  sombre,  mirth- 
less fashion,  intrigued  by  the  spectacle  of  his  own  symptoms 
(heaven  knows  he  considered  them  often  enough).  He  was 
amused  at  the  memory  of  his  emotions  on  the  edge  of  a  dusky 
wood,  at  the  egoism  which  had  imagined  it  could  wipe  Roberta 
out,  and  yet  but  for  this  trick  Nature  had  played  him  he  still 
felt  he  might  have  succeeded  in  carrying  out  the  part  he  had 
ascribed  to  himself.  Even  now  he  couldn't  believe  that  the 
things  which  had  beaten  into  him  down  there  in  the  wood  were 
lies.  He  knew  they  weren't,  even  when  Roberta  came  back, 
when  his  soul  melted  in  an  unexpected  and  indescribable 
tenderness  at  the  sight  and  promise  of  her.  Nature  had 
cheated  him,  but  at  least  she  had  given  him  three  months  of 
the  truest  happiness  he  had  known,  three  months  in  which 
the  thought  of  his  child  had  somehow  purified  his  relationship 
with  Roberta.  He  had  devoted  himself  to  her,  found  new  queer 
little  ways  of  pleasing  her,  of  keeping  her  bright  and  cheer- 
ful. .  .  .  And  then  that  door  shut  in  his  face;  that  night, 
white  and  full  of  suspense  .  .  .  and,  presently,  Roberta's 
passionate  distaste,  "I've  had  enough  of  that  side  of  life, 
thank  you  ...  1" 

241 


242  INTRUSION 

She  meant  it:  at  least  there  was  no  mistaking  that.  .  .  , 
No  mistaking,  either,  his  own  position.  He  wanted  to  go— 
and  he  couldn't.  He  was  bound  to  Roberta  by  this  passion 
of  the  senses,  by  this  horrible  emotion  of  love  that  had,  as  it 
were,  no  backbone  of  self-respect.  It  wouldn't  last  for  ever. 
He  knew  that:  knew  that  the  sort  of  feeling  he  had  for 
Roberta  was  of  its  essence  transitory.  It  would  pass.  Some 
day  the  revulsion  would  come;  he  would  be  free  of  her.  But 
not  yet.  .  .  . 

Meantime  he  fell  back  on  his  pride,  on  his  work  and  on  the 
barely-formed  thought  that  Roberta  some  day  might  capitu- 
late. .  .  .  Even  his  pride  wouldn't  save  him  if  she  did.  He 
knew  that,  too.  His  contempt  for  himself  was  colossal. 

Much  of  it  his  work  absorbed.  His  evenings  went  in  the 
preparation  of  some  pamphlet  he  had  undertaken  to  get  out 
for  one  of  the  many  Societies  he  attended  but  did  not  join. 
He  was  doing  it  not  because  he  cared  for  that  sort  of  thing, 
but  because  it  was  one  of  the  few  things  he  could  do,  for 
though  he  had  the  reformist  sense  he  lacked  courage.  The 
crude,  ugly  facts  he  tilted  at  on  paper  drained  him,  in  actuality, 
of  hope.  He  didn't  believe  you  could  alter  things;  at  least 
not  enough  to  matter.  His  sense  of  humour  boggled  at  the 
spectacle  of  a  world  awry  crying  out  for  the  man  with  a  vision 
and  being  offered  a  politican  with  an  Act  of  Parliament  under 
his  arm.  Broadening  down  from  precedent  to  precedent? — 
an  irritating  phrase  that  made  a  mere  lifetime  look  so  stupid. 
And  people  were  stupid,  too:  even  the  people  who  suffered 
most,  because  they  would  not  fight  and  distrusted  change.  As 
though  some  day  they  hoped  the  luck  might  alter;  the  wheel 
spin  round.  .  .  .  Even  the  pamphlet  he  was  writing  would 
be  read,  Allan  knew,  by  the  wrong  people.  Yet  he  went  on 
in  a  sort  of  hopeful  hopelessness,  even  under  the  eye  of 
Roberta's  scorn  and  his  knowledge  of  Guen's  verdict  of 
futility. 

Somehow,  here,  Guen  mattered  most.  .  .  .  Perhaps  because 
she  wouldn't  leave  the  subject  alone.  All  this  propaganda — 
bad  for  his  art.  Besides,  Allan  was  the  wrong  person.  In 
the  practical  world  of  reform  you  had  to  be  hard :  harder  than 
Allan,  anyway.  You  had  to  be  the  sort  of  person  facts  didn't 
hurt.  .  .  .  Whenever  they  met  she  and  Allan  went  over  the 
ground  afresh:  mentally  they  picked  up  their  feet  and  put 


INTRUSION  243 

them  down  again  in  the  same  place — an  absurd  proceeding,  as 
Allan,  impatient,  pointed  out. 

"But  then  we  are  absurd,"  Guen  said.  "Absurd  and  utterly 
futile.  None  of  us  matter,  over-much :  the  word  'indispensable* 
ought  to  be  cut  out  of  the  dictionary.  Nobody's  indispensable: 
most  of  us  simply  don't  count.  We  believe  (some  of  us)  in 
ideas,  and  work  for  our  Bottomleys.  We  loathe  Mammon, 
and  form  part  of  the  procession  in  his  temple.  Oh,  I  know 
it's  inevitable,  that  we  can't  afford  to  choose,  can't  afford  to 
think,  that  if  we  did  there'd  be  no  place  for  us  in  the  world 
at  all.  But  that  only  makes  our  futility  the  more  unanswer- 
able. ...  I'd  like  to  have  Caryl's  faith  in  the  essential  goodness 
and  meaning  of  life,  but  I  haven't  got  it.  ...  To  me,  life's 
the  one  real  absurdity,  the  ultimate  outrage.  .  .  ." 

But  Roberta's  critical  eye  turned  not  upon  life,  but  upon 
Allan  who  wrestled  with  it.  She  complained  that  he  was 
neglecting  her. 

"When  you've  done  reforming  the  world,"  she  said,  "p'raps 
you'll  remember  me." 

"But  you  can't  be  reformed,"  Allan  said. 

"Neither  can  the  world,"  said  Roberta.  "I  agree  with 
Guen.  Much  better  leave  it  alone."  (Had  Guen  really  said 
that?)  "And  I'm  tired  of  the  sight  of  you  sitting  there 
write,  write,  write.  I'm  your  wife  .  .  .  (she  could  say  that!) 
but  I  suppose  I  don't  count." 

It  was  difficult  not  to  hate  her:  difficult  not  to  point  out 
that  she  was  not  his  wife  .  .  .  that  he  owed  her  nothing. 
He  did  hate  her,  sometimes;  but  sometimes,  too,  he  put  away 
his  work  and  took  her  to  the  theatre. 

Roberta  was  very  clever:  she  believed  in  keeping  up  appear- 
ances, so  that  nobody  guessed.  But  she  was  horribly  dull. 
Tommy  had  gone  to  America.  So  had  Rayne.  Roberta  had 
met  one  of  the  Invertebrates  one  day  who  had  given  her  this 
information.  She  also  said  that  Tommy  had  "chucked"  Rayne, 
and  seemed  surprised  that  Roberta  had  not  guessed  that 
Tommy  had  been  Rayne's  mistress.  "She  never  made  a  secret 
of  it  with  us.  I  s'pose  she  thought  you  were  too  young  to 
know.  Not  that  she  stuck  to  him  or  him  to  her  ...  he  was 
gone  on  you,  once,  wasn't  he?  Of  course  he  was  'fasdnatmg." 

Roberta  reflected  that  Tommy  had  played  her  a  mean  trick, 
but  Tommy  was  good  company.  You  were  never  dull  with. 


244  INTRUSION 

her.  She  wished  vaguely  that  Tommy  had  not  gone  to 
America.  She  wished,  too,  that  Caryl  would  come  in  more 
often,  and  that  she  would  bring  Dick  Merrick  to  see  her. 
Caryl  had  been  engaged  to  him  a  whole  month  and  Roberta 
had  not  yet  set  eyes  upon  him.  It  was  true  that  Pen  in  her 
new  loquacious  mood  had  been  informative,  had  told  her  that 
Dick  was  a  popular  favourite,  but  restless.  He  couldn't  settle 
down,  had  done  nothing  definite  since  his  release  from  the 
Army,  beyond  taking  a  languid  interest  in  one  or  two  ventures 
which  had  come  to  nothing.  Of  course  that,  as  Pen  said, 
wouldn't  "do."  The  man  who  was  going  to  marry  Caryl 
must  have  an  assured  income.  Besides,  it  wasn't  good  for  a 
man  to  hang  about,  doing  nothing.  Roberta  had  agreed. 
Certainly  men  ought  to  work.  That  was  the  one  certain  fact 
in  an  uncertain  world.  She  never  doubted  it. 

"Tell  her  to  bring  him  to  tea,"  Roberta  said.  "Only  not 
a  Sunday,  because  if  Allan's  here  he'll  button-hole  him  and  I 
shan't  get  a  look  in." 


May  went  by  in  her  green-gold  sandals  and  it  was  in  the 
second  week  of  June  that  Caryl  came  in,  alone,  to  tea.  Dick 
had  gone  to  Sheffield:  would  be  there  a  week.  Caryl  was  full 
of  two  pieces  of  news.  Her  father  had  been  smitten  by  the 
idea  that  Dick,  by  virtue  of  his  Jan-like  smile  and  his  Jan-like 
"charm,"  must  possess  at  least  a  modicum  of  his  talent  for 
extracting  orders  from  a  granite  block.  Anyway,  Sheffield 
was  to  be  the  acid  test:  if  it  came  off  Dick  was  to  have  a 
junior  partnership  in  the  firm  and  was  "settled"  for  life.  An 
awful  nuisance  all  this  fuss  about  a  proper  income.  .  .  .  Her 
second  item  of  news  was  much  more  interesting,  Caryl  thought : 
it  was  that  Dick  had  sold  his  ramshackle  old  car  and  in  its 
place  had  bought  a  motor-cycle  and  sidecar.  Caryl  and  he 
had  ideas  about  scouring  England  during  the  summer  months. 

"Well,  you  might  begin  with  Number  Sixteen,"  said  Roberta. 
"You're  a  pig  to  keep  him  all  to  yourself." 

"I  know,"  said  Caryl,  "but  Berta,  I  don't  have  much  of 
him,  you  know — I  don't  really.  I  have  to  be  so  strict  with 
myself — I  keep  saying  'no'  when  I'm  simply  dying  to  say  'yes.' 


INTRUSION  245 

I  simply  haven't  time  to  be  engaged.  .  .  That's  what  Dick  says. 
He's  not  a  bit  keen  on  my.  swotting  ...  he  isn't  a  bit  'brainy.' 
Yet,  really,  he's  much  cleverer  than  /  am.  He  knows  all  the 
things  that  matter.  .  .  .  (I  don't  quite  know  what  they  are,  but 
he  knows  them.)  Berta  .  .  .  didn't  you  love  being  engaged ?" 

"Rather,"  said  Roberta.  "It's  much  more  fun  than  being 
married!  I  shouldn't  be  in  a  hurry,  if  I  were  you.  When 
you're  married  it's  different.  Marriage  is  awfully  changing. . . ." 

"Who  changes?     The  woman?" 

"No,  the  man.  .  .  .  Oh,  marriage  is  horrid — for  the  woman." 

"You  don't  really  think  that,"  said  Caryl. 

"Don't  I?  Nobody  ever  says  what  they  think  about  mar- 
riage. I  don't  see  why  everybody  pretends.  .  .  .  Oh,  you 
needn't  think  I've  been  quarrelling  with  Allan.  I  haven't. 
I  never  quarrel  with  Allan.  ...  To  start  with,  I  couldn't. 
He  hardly  knows  I'm  here.  He's  everlastingly  writing.  I 
don't  mind  telling  you,  my  dear,  that  my  life's  damn  dull.  .  .  . 
I'd  rather,  any  day,  be  back  in  the  old  studio.  Marriage  is 
rotten.  .  .  .  It's  just  what  Tommy  used  to  say:  when  you're 
married  you're  expected  to  be  maid-of-all-work,  wife,  child- 
bearer  and  general  cook  ...  all  for  nothing.  .  .  ." 

"No — for  love,  surely,"  said  Caryl. 

"Oh,  love!"  said  Roberta.  "I  don't  believe  in  it,  and  any- 
way it's  poor  payment.  You  can't  buy  anything  with  it." 

"Don't  you  love  Allan?" 

"I  don't  know.  ...  I  liked  him,  once,  better  than  anybody 
else." 

"And  now?" 

"Well,  there  just  isn't  anybody  else.  .  .  .  I'm  fed-up.  Allan 
doesn't  care  about  anything  but  his  beastly  writing.  Write, 
write,  write.  Every  night  it's  the  same  ...  as  soon  as  ever 
dinner's  finished." 

"You  should  teach  him  better." 

"Oh,  I'm  tired  of  trying.    I  let  him  get  on  with  it.  .  .  ." 

"Don't  you  ...  care?" 

"Not  so  long  as  he  leaves  me  alone." 

But  Caryl  was  very  far  from  understanding.     She  said : 

"I  know  Allan  can  be  very  trying,  but  he's  awfully  fond  of 
you,  Berta." 

"Queen  Anne's  dead,"  said  Roberta.  "Let's  talk  of  some- 
thing else.  When  will  you  bring  Mr.  Merrick?" 


246  INTRUSION 

"Never  if  you  call  him  that.     He's  'Dick'  to  everyone." 

"He  mayn't  like  me,"  said  Roberta. 

"Why  not?" 

"I  may  bore  him  stiff.  .  .  ." 

"You  won't,"  said  Caryl.   "I've  told  you,  Dick  isn't  brainy." 

"You're  very  complimentary,  I  must  say!" 

"Oh,  I'm  awfully  sorry.  .  .  .  But  really,  you'll  get  on  admira- 
bly. .  .  .  You  see  ...  you're  so  dreadfully  pretty."  Her  voice 
was  a  little  wistful. 

"I  feel  plain  enough  these  days,"  said  Roberta,  angry  that 
she  must  waste  her  sweetness  now  upon  the  desert  air.  It 
didn't  do  to  flirt,  even  ever  so  mildly,  with  Allan,  and  there  was 
simply  nobody  else.  Some  day  she  would  hate  Allan. 

But  except  in  sudden  gusts  of  anger  it  wasn't  possible  for 
her  really  to  hate  anybody.  There  wasn't  enough  passion  in 
her  for  that.  Yet  sometimes  as  she  watched  Allan's  grave 
face  bent  over  his  work  she  thought,  "Good  heavens!  I'm 
twenty-three!  How  long  am  I  to  go  on  with  this?  If  only 
Allan  would  go  off  with  some  other  girl  .  .  .  put  himself  in 
the  wrong.  .  .  ." 

Anne  Suffield  noticed  presently  that  something  was  amiss. 
She  thought  Roberta  was  restless  and  discontented.  So  dread- 
ful for  her  that  her  child  had  died.  .  .  .  She  had  suffered 
terribly  .  .  .  seemed  to  have  been  plucked  up  by  the  roots.  .  .  . 

Roberta  considered  that  a  safe  card  to  play.  She  didn't 
suppose  Allan  would  give  her  away,  and  if  he  did,  so  much  the 
better.  .  .  .  He'd  have  everybody  against  him.  The  role  of 
the  bereaved  mother.  ...  It  would  suit  her  admirably. 

Allan  did  not  "give  her  away."  He  was  tired.  His  unsatis- 
fied passion  was  wearing  him  out.  There  were  times  when 
he  could  hardly  keep  his  hands  off  Roberta,  and  he  hid  it — 
not  only  that,  but  the  surge  of  emotions  that  swept  over  him — 
beneath  an  appearance  of  calm  so  absolute  that  even  Anne 
Suffield  wondered  if  it  might  not  be  indifference.  She 
thought  Allan  was  rather  too  wrapped  up  in  his  work.  "Don't 
you  think,  dear,"  she  asked,  "that  perhaps  you  leave  Roberta 
rather  too  much  to  herself?  Isn't  she,  perhaps,  rather  lonely?" 

"Does  she  complain?" 

"Complain?  Berta?  Oh  no,  dear.  I  didn't  for  a  moment 
mean  to  suggest  that.  .  .  .  Only,  things  have  been  rather  hard 
upon  her.  ...  Of  course,  she  may  have  another  child.  .  .  ." 


INTRUSION  247 

Allan  said  nothing. 

"Meanwhile,  dear,  you  oughtn't  to  forget  how  young  she 
is  ...  and  how  pretty." 

"No,"  said  Allan  dryly.  "Strangely  enough,  mother,  that's 
a  thing  I  never  forget." 

This  sort  of  conversation  didn't  take  you  very  far. 


In  the  middle  of  June  Antony  Gore  offered  Allan  another 
chance  of  the  sub-editorship  of  The  Miscellany.  The  sixth 
number  was  just  going  to  press  and  A.G.,  who  had  other  irons 
in  the  fire,  wanted  the  bulk  of  the  work  it  represented  taken 
off  his  hands;  for  since  Allan  had  refused  at  the  beginning  to 
come  in  he  had  gone  on  single-handed.  "Ask  Allan  again," 
Guen  had  suggested,  "I  think  it  very  likely  he'll  accept  now." 
"Reasons,"  she  said  in  reply  to  A.G.'s  laconic  "Why?"  But 
she  didn't  tell  him  what  they  were. 

Roberta  was  clever  at  keeping  up  appearances,  but  not  quite 
clever  enough,  perhaps,  for  Guen,  who  had  quite  recently  paid 
a  visit  to  Number  Sixteen.  But  Guen  was  right.  Allan  was 
asked  and  Allan  accepted.  When  it  was  all  over,  when  he 
had  shaken  hands  with  his  chief  and  turned  his  back  on  the 
Comet  for  ever,  he  told  Roberta.  It  was  not  so  much  that  he 
had  not  meant  to  tell  her  as  that,  quite  simply,  it  hadn't 
occurred  to  him.  He  was  getting  so  used  to  ordering  his  life 
without  Roberta. 

And  Roberta  said  nothing — just  shrugged  her  shoulders  as 
though  his  affairs  had  no  interest  for  her,  as  indeed  they  had 
not.  She  only  wanted,  in  her  own  expressive  language,  to 
"get  quit"  of  Allan — to  get  out  of  the  net.  What  a  fool  she 
was  to  have  married  him  1  When  she  might  have  done  so  much 
better  for  herself! 

So  she  shrugged  her  shoulders  at  his  news.  .  .  .  Really,  she 
didn't  care  what  he  did.  All  the  same,  her  boredom  reached 
the  point  at  times  when  she  was  flung  back  upon  caring,  when 
she  had  to  ask  him  to  take  her  out.  .  .  .  Twice  in  one  week. 
(She  was  reduced  to  that!  If  only  Tommy  had  not  gone  to 
America — or  would  come  back  .  .  .  !)  And  on  both  occasions 
Allan  refused.  It  was  on  the  second  that  Roberta  said  sweetly, 
"I  see.  .  .  .  We  can't  afford  luxuries  nowadays." 


248  INTRUSION 

"We  can  afford  the  pit  of  a  theatre,  if  that  is  what  you 
mean." 

"It  isn't,"  she  said.  "Not  the  pit.  .  .  .  But  if  we  can  afford 
it  why  can't  we  go?" 

"Because  I'm  too  busy." 

"I  don't  matter,  I  suppose?" 

"Not  very  much." 

"You're  a  nice  sort  of  husband,  aren't  you?" 

"You  should  know  best." 

"I  wonder  why  on  earth  you  ever  married  me!"  she  said. 

"I  don't,"  said  Allan.     "I  know." 

"So  do  I — because  you  knew  you  couldn't  get  what  you 
wanted  without." 

He  wanted  to  strangle  her,  but  he  said  quietly,  "You  put 
it  vulgarly  but  truthfully." 

Roberta  smiled.    "And  you  call  that  'love'?" 

"There  you  mistake.  I  shouldn't  dream  of  calling  it  any 
such  thing." 

"I  don't  believe  in  'love,'  "  said  Roberta. 

"I  am  aware  of  it.  That  being  so  it's  extraordinary  that 
you  should  have  been  able  to  teach  me  so  well  what  love  is — 
and  is  not." 

"Well — you  pretended  you  were  in  love  with  me,  anyhow." 

"In  love!     That's  a  very  different  matter.  .  .  ." 

She  knit  her  brows  and  passed  on.  "Well,  you  can't  say  / 
ever  pretended.  ...  I  never  told  you  I  was  in  love  with  you. 
You  knew  I  married  you  to  get  away  from  Manningtree 
Avenue  and  mother.  Particularly  mother." 

"I  see,"  he  said.  "Any  other  man  would  have  done  as 
•well?" 

"Any  presentable  man.  .  .  ." 

"I'm  glad  I  came  up  to  standard." 

She  laughed  and  came  and  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  table. 

"I  liked  you,"  she  said,  "because  you  were  different.  At 
least  I  thought  you  were  different.  .  .  .  You  never  asked  me 
to  spend  week-ends  with  you." 

"I  see.     I  appealed  as  a  novelty?" 

"Well,  I  wasn't  used  to  it.  ...  Not  exactly.  Men  are  awful 
beasts.  Even  the  nice  ones  like  that  brother  of  yours." 

"He  won't  offend  again,"  said  Allan.  "We  can  leave  him 
out  of  it.  May  this  conversation  now  end?" 


INTRUSION  249 

"You  mean  I'm  to  shut  up?     My  conversation  bores  you?" 

"I  mean  it  doesn't  seem  very  profitable." 

Roberta  sat  there  swinging  her  legs,  a  little  mocking  smild 
on  her  lips. 

"You  think  you're  awfully  clever,  don't  you?"  she  said. 

Allan  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  looked  down  at  his  unfin- 
ished work. 

"I  wish,"  he  said,  "you'd  go  away." 

He  looked  up  at  her  and  the  blood  came  suddenly  into  his 
face.  He  understood  she  was  flirting  with  him;  she  was 
amusing  herself,  but,  also,  she  wanted  to  assert  herself — to 
prove  that  she  still  had  the  power  to  make  him  do  what  she 
wanted.  Not  that  she  really  wanted  him  to  kiss  her:  she 
only  wanted  him  to  want  to  kiss  her  and  take  her  out.  And 
only  that  because  she  was  dull.  Her  manless  world  was  a 
desert.  .  .  . 

"Go  away,"  said  Allan  again. 

"I  shan't,"  she  said. 

He  got  up  and  came  to  her. 

"Well ?"  she  said.     "You  look  very  fierce." 

The  light,  dropping  directly  upon  her  hair,  called  out  its 
latent  loveliness.  Out  of  the  dark  green  frock  she  was  wear- 
ing her  exquisitely  modelled  face  and  neck  rose  like  a  flower 
on  its  stalk.  Her  beauty  had  come  back — had  emerged  from 
the  mist  that  had  shrouded  it  through  the  winter  and  early 
spring.  And  she  had  grown  a  little  plumper.  As  he  looked  at 
her  the  old  throb  of  the  senses  came  back  to  him:  his  mind 
seemed  to  stop  short  as  he  looked  at  her.  The  old  yearning 
swept  over  him:  the  old  longing  to  see  in  her  all  he  had 
imagined  she  might  one  day  become.  And  then,  suddenly,  it 
had  gone.  He  didn't  care  what  she  was  or  was  not.  He  only 
knew  she  was  beautiful.  ...  He  pulled  her  up  against  him  and 
kissed  her  roughly. 

"I  hate  being  kissed  like  that,"  she  said. 

"Sorry,"  he  said.     "Go  and  get  your  things  on." 

He  would  pay  for  his  kiss.  He  would  pay  for  anything  else 
she  gave  him.  So  much  for  so  much.  .  .  .  He  shrugged  his 
shoulders.  Well,  what  was  he  grumbling  at?  He'd  always 
known  that  when  it  came  to  the  point  his  pride  wouldn't  save 
him.  .  .  . 

It  hadn't. 


CHAPTER   THREE 


CARYL'S  plan  of  scouring  England  in  Dick's  sidecar  did 
not  appear  to  mature  very  quickly.     In  the  early  sum- 
mer Dick  was  out  of  town  a  good  deal  and  on  his 
unexpected  reappearances  circumstances  were  usually  horribly 
against  them.   Once,  unromantically,  Caryl  had  a  bilious  attack; 
once,  not  expecting  him,  she  had  gone  off  to  Green  Hedges 
for  the  week-end,  and  once  or  twice  some  lecture  she  dare  not 
miss  got  in  the  way.     But  at  least  she  fulfilled  her  promise 
and  took  Dick  to  have  tea  with  Roberta. 

And  Roberta  had  found  him  interesting.  She  liked  the  look 
of  him,  with  his  dark  blue  eyes,  narrow,  short-lidded  like 
Caryl's  own,  giving  that  impression  of  laughter  even  when  his 
mouth  was  serious.  His  features,  though  clear-cut,  were  not 
remarkable,  save  for  the  laughing  blue  eyes,  to  which  your 
own  always  came  back.  He  had  an  excellent  skin,  unusually 
fair,  of  the  kind  that  tans  easily,  and  a  wide  mouth,  not 
beautiful,  but  with  teeth  that  were,  to  redeem  it.  And  he 
had  charm — a  stupid  word  that  may  mean  anything  or  nothing. 
In  Dick's  case  it  seemed  to  mean  good  temper,  a  trick  of 
making  people  care  for  him,  and  another  of  wearing  the 
honours  of  his  victories  gracefully.  Certainly  they  cost  him 
little  beside,  perhaps,  a  sort  of  sincere  insincerity.  He  looked 
happy  and  free,  and  perhaps  because  people  are  so  seldom 
either  the  one  or  the  other  they  loved  him  for  the  illusion. 
They  used  about  him  the  phrase  "a  nice  boy";  a  nice  boy, 
Guen  thought,  who  took  people  (even  Caryl)  and  things  a 
little  too  much  for  granted,  and  with  a  gift  for  seeing  no 
more  than  he  wanted  to  see.  She  had  the  impression  that 
he  didn't  feel  very  much  or  very  deeply:  as  though  he  had 
not  yet  gone  far  down  to  the  waters  of  life,  but  stood  pot- 
tering about  on  the  edge.  He  needed,  she  thought,  to  suffer. 
Even  after  the  war  and  his  share  in  it  she  thought  that; 

250 


INTRUSION  251 

for  the  war  had  caught  him  young  and  had  been  kind.  His 
flights  over  the  German  lines  had  been  so  many  exciting 
adventures:  no  time  for  fear,  no  time  for  thought.  Even 
those  two  crashes,  of  which  only  Caryl  knew  the  facts,  had 
been  adventures,  too — "awfully  big  adventures"  you  felt,  as 
Peter  Pan  said  of  Death.  They  hadn't  destroyed  his  nerve. 
He  was  like  a  schoolboy,  and  his  imagination,  if  he  had  any, 
did  not  oppress  him.  Already  the  memory  of  the  war  was 
dropping  from  him  like  a  cloak  from  his  shoulders,  just  as  it 
had  done  with  Jan.  Queer,  Guen  thought,  how  people  could 
forget — what  she  wouldn't  forget  in  a  lifetime.  She  hid  her 
envy  under  a  moment's  anger;  with  herself,  with  the  people 
who  forgot.  What  did  it  matter,  anyway,  what  happened  to 
a  world  that  forgot  as  easily  as  all  that? 

But  certainly  it  mattered  what  happened  to  Caryl,  and  Guen 
wondered  sometimes  how  firmly  she  held  Dick.  Easy  enough 
to  see  how  firmly  he  held  her.  Yet  that  exhilarating  sense  they 
had  of  To-day,  that  still  more  invigorating  sense  of  To-morrow, 
surely  that  ought  to  do  something  for  them  ? 

Roberta,  on  his  first  visit,  though  she  found  Caryl's  beloved 
interesting,  found  him  also  a  little  disappointing.  At  no  point 
during  the  afternoon  had  he  shown  that  he  was  aware  of  her 
in  the  way  that  young  men  of  his  age  usually  were,  and  Roberta 
deserved  some  credit  for  the  perspicacity  which  got  through 
to  the  charm  which,  for  that  short  interval,  was  certainly  in 
abeyance.  "He'd  be  all  right,"  she  thought,  "if  you  could 
get  at  him,"  and  the  bulk  of  the  conversation  was  left  to  Caryl 
while  Roberta  worked  out  the  problem  thus  presented.  Because 
she,  most  certainly,  was  not  "getting  at  him."  He  seemed 
hardly  to  look  at  her  and  showed  an  unflattering  anxiety  to  fall 
in  with  Caryl's  suggestion  that  they  must  be  getting  along.  It 
was  true  Caryl  had  said  Dick  didn't  care  what  a  girl  looked 
like;  but  Roberta  knew  that  if  it  was  true  of  any  man  in  the 
world  (and  she  doubted  it),  it  certainly  wasn't  true  of  Richard 
Merrick.  Let  Caryl  think  it,  little  fool,  if  she  liked.  .  .  .  She 
obviously  did,  or  she'd  never  let  him  see  her  in  brown — the 
colour  of  all  others  she  ought  never  to  wear.  How  was  it  she 
didn't  see  that  her  particular  shade  of  brown  hair  was  ruined 
by  the  colour  of  her  frock,  that  it  robbed  it  of  life,  made  it 
drab  and  uninteresting?  So  silly  of  Caryl  not  to  be  more 
careful ! 


252  INTRUSION 

But  Caryl,  ignorant  of  sartorial  shortcomings,  was  oppressed 
by  those  of  Dick's  mood.  Really,  not  at  all  a  successful 
afternoon. 

"Didn't  you  like  her?"  she  asked  him  out  in  the  roadway, 
and  Dick  said,  "Oh,  she's  all  right  .  .  .  not  much  in  her.  A 
sort  of  anodyne,  isn't  she?  I  mean  she  looks  as  though  she'd 
make  life  practically  painless.  .  .  ." 

"How  disappointing  you  are!  I  wanted  you  to  admire  her 
tremendously.  And  she  specially  wanted  to  see  you." 

"Well,  she's  seen  me." 

"But  you'll  go  again?  You  do  like  her  well  enough  for 
that?" 

"What  an  extraordinary  creature  you  are!  Always  shoving 
me  on  to  somebody  else.  It  used  to  be  Marjorie.  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  rot!"  said  Caryl.  "Besides,  you  needn't  pretend  it 
was  any  hardship.  .  .  .  You  know  you  like  Marjorie  quite  a 
lot.  And  I  did  want  you  and  Roberta  to  be  friends." 

"You're  a  most  unnatural  creature,"  Dick  told  her  as  he  took 
her  arm  and  felt  her  press  herself  against  him. 

"Reason  number  one,"  she  said. 

"Because  you're  always  wanting  me  to  like  other  girls." 

"Only  girls  I  like.  .  .  .  Why  shouldn't  you?  I'm  not  a 
vampire:  you're  too  good  to  keep  all  to  yourself.  ...  I  can't 
think  how  anybody  lives,  somehow,  without  knowing  you.  I 
don't  mind  sharing  a  little  bit  of  you  if  I  can  have  all  the  other 
part  .  .  .  the  best  part  .  .  .  for  myself.  Reason  number  two?" 

"You  don't  powder  your  face." 

"No  good.  I've  got  the  sort  of  skin  powder  won't  stop  on. 
Besides,  they  don't  make  any  powder  that  looks  well  on  a  brown 
skin.  .  .  .  But  Roberta  doesn't  use  powder,  either!" 

"What!    You  mean  to  say  it's  real?" 

"Every  bit.  Oh,  Dick!"  (a  comical  look  of  dismay  came 
on  Caryl's  face)  "you  don't  mean  to  say  you  thought  she 
made  up?" 

"Of  course  I  did.  Most  of  the  complexions  that  look  too 
good  to  be  true,  aren't.  .  .  .  Besides,  those  eyes  with  that  skin 
and  hair!" 

Allan  heard  of  Dick's  visit  with  no  particular  interest.  He 
did  not  think  Dick  good  enough  for  Caryl,  though  he  saw 
plainly  enough  what  it  was  Caryl  liked  about  him.  He  had 
her  sense  of  life,  her  radiant  happiness  hi  the  mere  fact  of  exist- 


INTRUSION  253 

ence.  Allan  granted  him  that,  but  with  this  difference:  he 
cared  about  life  because  life  was  pleasant.  Allan  did  not 
believe  his  happiness  was  innate,  as  was  Caryl's,  as  much  a 
part  of  her  as  her  skin.  Whatever  you  had  or  had  not,  there 
was  always  the  coloured  pageantry  of  life.  ...  So  she  might 
have  that,  Caryl,  in  rags  upon  life's  highway,  would  go 
blithely.  But  for  Dick  the  coloured  pageantry  would  not  be 
enough:  he  would  want  a  coloured  part  of  his  own,  complete 
with  his  nicely  cooked  food,  his  assured  income  and  his  motor- 
cycle or  whatever  the  toy  of  the  moment  might  be.  He  could 
not  be  happy,  as  Caryl  could,  with  his  eyes  wide  open.  He'd 
see,  Allan  felt,  no  more  ever  than  he  wanted  to  see,  and  yet 
that  phrase  lodged  in  the  mind.  He  was,  quite  definitely,  "a 
nice  boy." 

Allan,  to  Dick,  was  a  "queer  fish."  To  Caryl  he  called 
him  the  Revolutionary,  sniffed,  as  much  as  Caryl  would  allow 
him,  at  his  ideas,  and  without  knowing  it  paraphrased  Steven- 
son in  approval  of  the  Allan  behind  them — quite  mad,  of 
course,  but  decent — awfully  decent.  Of  Guen  he  declared  he 
was  terrified.  Pure  intellect,  he  told  Caryl,  knocked  him  flat. 

"You  can  see  her  intellect  sticking  out  of  her,"  he  said. 
"Just  look  -at  her  forehead.  It  makes  me  want  to  hide." 

And  when  Caryl  said:  "What'll  happen  when  I  get  my 
degree?"  he  told  her  that  she  was  different — that  her  intellect 
didn't  stick  out.  "You  don't  look  clever.  You  just  look  alive." 

"Same  to  you!"  said  Caryl,  and  they  grinned  at  each  other, 
as  though  they  knew  exactly  where  the  bond  that  held  them 
was  strongest. 


It  happened  that  summer  that  the  Hestons  abandoned  the 
solidly-built  Berkshire  house  they  called  the  Cottage  in  favour 
of  something  they  called  a  bungalow  somewhere  else,  and  the 
Suffields,  tempted  by  the  early  fine  weather,  took  it  off  their 
hands.  Thither,  at  the  end  of  June,  Anne  Suffield  departed, 
taking  Caryl  and  Roberta  with  her,  because  Caryl,  she  thought, 
was  working  too  hard  and  Roberta  looked  as  though  she  wanted 
a  change.  She  did:  and  though  it  was  not  quite  the  change 
afforded  by  the  Berkshire  cottage,  she  had  reached  the  point 
when  anything  was  better  than  Meldon  Avenue.  Caryl,  torn. 


254  INTRUSION 

from  her  work,  went  protesting,  until  Dick  came  home  with  an 
interregnum  yawning  between  Manchester  and  Leeds  and  went 
off  to  Wokingham  to  dispose  of  it. 

Peace  reigned. 

During  that  fortnight  of  Roberta's  absence  Allan  strove 
resolutely  to  put  her  out  of  his  thoughts.  He  was  very  busy. 
The  new  number  of  The  Miscellany  was  going  to  press,  and  his 
pen  itched  to  get  to  work  on  the  proofs  of  his  satires  which 
Guen  had  eventually  succeeded  in  getting  him  to  collect.  That 
young  woman  herself  was  in  town;  having  fled  shrieking,  so 
she  alleged,  from  the  quiet  and  comfort  of  Green  Hedges,  which 
at  times  got  on  her  nerves,  as  the  weather  will  on  other  people's. 
Here,  during  the  long  July  days,  she  worked  at  A.G.'s  old 
room  in  Bloomsbury,  and  sometimes  Allan  took  his  work  there 
in  the  afternoons  and  stayed  to  meet  the  people  who  dropped 
in  later  to  tea. 

It  was  not  until  Roberta  came  home  that  Allan  realised  how 
frequently  Madeleine  Hervey  had  been  included  among  them. 
There  was  really  no  reason  why  Roberta  should  not  have 
dropped  in  to  tea  at  the  Attic,  but  it  took  Allan  by  surprise 
when  she  did.  It  was  the  day  following  her  return,  very  few 
people  had  turned  up,  and  he  and  Madeleine  sat  together 
on  the  verandah.  They  had  gone  out  there  primarily  because 
of  the  heat;  but  it  wasn't  always  the  heat  which  explained  why 
they  paired  off  together  in  this  fashion.  The  truth  was  they 
were  getting  into  the  habit  of  sitting  themselves  down  together 
in  some  corner  and  forgetting  the  rest  of  the  company,  although 
this,  too,  Allan  did  not  realise  until  Roberta,  not  by  anything 
she  said,  but  by  her  very  presence,  had  drawn  his  attention  to 
it.  Her  eyes  had  taken  them  in  as  she  entered  the  room;  not 
only  the  close-drawn  intimacy  of  their  chairs,  but  the  eager 
glow  upon  their  faces  as  they  talked;  the  obvious  air  of 
having  forgotten  their  surroundings.  But  she  refrained  from 
coming  out  to  them  and  made  herself  amiable  enough  to  Miss 
Hardwick  and  the  gentleman  with  knee-breeches,  who  got  on 
with  her  admirably  because  he  could  see  that  she  had  a  beautiful 
face  and  guessed  that  she  was  stupid.  He  was  essentially  the 
sort  of  man  who  was  never  really  at  home  with  a  woman  unless 
he  could,  ever  so  faintly,  despise  her. 

Roberta  and  Madeleine  had  never  met  since  that  first  after- 
noon eighteen  months  ago  at  Teddington,  but  when  Allan  came 


INTRUSION  255 

into  the  room  and  brought  Madeleine  over  to  Roberta,  that 
young  woman  was  affability  itself. 

"Of  course  I  remember  you,"  she  said.  "You  came  to  tea, 
didn't  you?  And  you  had  a  headache.  Isn't  this  a  nice  room?" 

They  abandoned  Allan  and  walked  round  together  looking 
at  it,  and  as  his  eyes  followed  Roberta  (as  did  the  eyes  of  all 
the  other  men  in  the  room)  he  realised  with  something  akin 
to  dismay  that  she  had  not  done  with  him  yet  nor  he  with  her. 
Even  now,  with  a  single  turn  of  her  lovely  head,  she  could 
possess  him  anew.  The  beauty  to  which  a  year  ago  he  had 
surrendered  held  him  still,  and  not  all  his  knowledge  of  the 
poverty  of  mind  and  spirit  behind  it  could  make  it  otherwise. 
She  had  nothing  to  give  that  was  worth  while,  but  there  were 
still  to  be  times  when  he  would  relinquish  everything  for  just 
that  something  worthless  she  had  it  in  her  power  to  bestow. 
Some  day  that  might  no  longer  be  true,  but  it  was  true  now. 
He  was  as  far  as  ever  from  opening  the  door  and  walking  out, 
and  that  feeling  of  dismay  came  to  him  again  as  he  realised 
how  much  more  difficult  it  was  going  to  be  now  to  keep  things 
up — to  play  Roberta's  game  as  he  had  played  it  for  the  past 
two  months,  though  heaven  alone  knew  how  or  why  or  what 
he  hoped  to  gain  by  it.  At  least  their  life  together  had  flowed 
along  on  a  semblance  of  amiability.  They  had  few  open  dis- 
agreements. He  had  been  able  to  go  on  with  his  work  and  had 
lived  for  a  whole  fortnight  without  her.  It  had  looked  like  a 
triumph.  .  .  . 

And  he  saw  now  that  it  wasn't,  for  here  was  Roberta  again, 
beckoning  him  with  the  colour  and  grace  and  sheer  delight  of 
her.  So  markedly  had  she  the  appearance  of  possessing  all  the 
feminine  graces,  it  was  difficult,  even  now,  when  his  passion  no 
longer  deluded  him,  to  realise  that  they  all  belonged  to  her 
body — that  her  soul  was  lean  and  angular. 


At  the  corner  of  the  Tottenham  Court  Road  Allan  refused 
Guen's  invitation  to  go  off  somewhere  together  for  a  meal  and 
climbed  with  Roberta  into  a  North  London  bus,  which  was 
crowded,  so  that  they  had  to  strap-hang.  And  Roberta,  leaning 
to  Allan,  expressed  her  chagrin  that  he  should  not  have  accepted 
Guen's  offer. 


256  INTRUSION 

"If  you're  going  to  work  all  the  evening,"  she  said,  "it 
won't  be  very  lively  for  me,  and  as  Miss  Hervey  would  have 
been  there  too  I  should  have  thought  you'd  have  jumped  at  it." 

He  looked  at  her.     She  smiled. 

"Oh,  it's  all  right.  I'm  not  jealous.  After  all,  she's  your 
sort.  ...  I  don't  blame  you.  You  ought  to  have  married 
someone  lit'ry.  .  .  ." 

"Two,  please,"  said  Allan  to  the  conductor,  and  was  astound- 
ingly  grateful  to  the  young  man  in  the  corner  who  at  that 
moment  caught  sight  of  Roberta's  face  and  rose  to  give  her 
his  seat. 

Left  to  his  thoughts  and  his  strap,  Allan  wondered  for  just 
one  second  why  he  should  have  received  the  impression  that 
Roberta  approved  of  this  friendship  with  Madeleine  Hervey — 
that  she  wanted,  for  some  reason  or  other,  to  encourage  it. 
And  then  the  thought  rode  out  upon  the  tide  of  his  gratitude 
that  at  least  she  had  not  objected — that  she  had  not  pushed 
Madeleine  with  wifely  determination  into  the  background.  He 
tried  to  think  what  he  would  have  done  if  she  had  .  .  .  what, 
too,  he  was  going  to  do  when  Guen  went  back  to  Green  Hedges 
and  these  afternoon  meetings  with  Madeleine  came  to  an  end. 
Somehow  this  afternoon  his  friendship  with  her  seemed  like  a 
tonic  after  the  fever  of  his  passion  for  Roberta.  It  was  as  if 
his  year  with  Roberta  had  drained  him  to  the  dregs,  emptied 
him  of  strength  and  vitality*  as  though  Madeleine,  with  her 
quiet  eyes,  her  restful  presence,  poured  strength  into  him  again, 
making  him  whole,  building  up  his  self-respect.  Her  attraction 
for  Allan  was,  so  far,  a  purely  sexless  thing,  for  in  Madeleine, 
as  in  Caryl,  sex  did  not  flaunt  itself.  You  desired  her  not  as  a 
woman,  but  as  a  human  being.  She  was  devoid  of  tricks,  and 
if  she  had  beauty  it  was  not  of  the  devastatingly  feminine  kind. 
That,  perhaps,  was  a  virtue  you  could  not  wholly  appreciate 
unless  you  had  lived  with  Roberta.  But  Allan  had.  .  .  . 
Strange  what  a  lot  of  things  Roberta  had  inadvertently  taught 
him:  but  nothing,  surely,  as  strange  as  this,  that  she  should 
have  shown  him  the  beauty  of  Madeleine's  friendship  and  his 
own  poignant  need  of  it. 


CHAPTER   FOUR 


CARYL  came  back  from  Wokingham  with  a  cold,  a  gen- 
eral inability  to  work,  and  evasive  replies  about  her 
holiday.  She  brought  back,  too,  a  strange  un-Caryl- 
like  reserve  alternately  shrouded  and  revealed  by  the  air  of 
smouldering  excitement  which  hung  about  her.  She  went  often 
to  Meldon  Avenue,  so  often  that  when  she  could  forget  how 
much  time  it  took  up,  how  much  study  it  dissipated,  Anne 
Suffield  smiled  with  approval,  for  she  still  thought  Allan  did 
not  realise  how  much  he  left  Roberta  to  herself;  how  few 
friends  she  seemed  to  have. 

Yet  even  with  Roberta  Caryl  preserved  her  odd  new  manner 
of  excitement.  She  talked  less  or  she  talked  too  much,  and 
occasionally  she  flashed  out  something  which  betrayed  the 
trouble  beneath,  or  would  have  betrayed  it  to  anyone  but 
Roberta.  There  was  the  morning  she  came  in  upon  that  young 
woman  struggling  with  the  aftermath  of  the  washing  of  her 
hair.  A  red-gold  mop,  it  hung  drying  upon  her  shoulders. 
Caryl  had  thrown  herself  down  in  a  seat  by  the  window,  talked 
of  a  thousand  and  one  things  that  didn't  matter  and  then, 
suddenly,  had  said  the  one  thing  that  did.  "I  wish  I'd  let 
my  hair  grow,  Berta!" 

And  Roberta  had  said,  "Now  don't  be  soppy!  You  only  say 
that  because  Dick  said  those  silly  things  that  day  I  washed  my 
hair  at  the  Cottage." 

"What  day?  I  don't  remember,"  Caryl  said  in  the  new 
evasive  way  that  had  come  to  her  of  late. 

But  she  did  remember.  The  whole  scene  rose  up  now  before 
her.  ...  Dick  running  his  fingers  through  Roberta's  hair  and 
turning  to  Caryl  with  a  little  laugh.  "Why  didn't  you  ever 
let  your  hair  grow,  Caryl?  I  wonder  what  you'd  look  like  with 
long  hair?"  And  Caryl  (she  remembered  this,  too)  had  grown 

257 


258  INTRUSION 

very  hot  about  the  face  and  said,  "Oh,  much  the  same,  I 
expect!"  But  later,  upstairs  in  her  own  room,  she  had  looked 
at  herself  critically  in  the  glass  and  clenched  her  hands.  "It's 
true,"  she  had  admitted.  "It's  damn  monotonous,  this  short 
hair!  .  .  .  There's  never  any  surprise  in  it!"  And  she  had 
remembered  the  surprise  in  Dick's  face  when  he  had  come  in 
and  seen  Roberta  sitting  there  before  the  fire.  .  .  . 

She  had  stayed  up  there  in  her  room,  half-sick  with  misery : 
not  understanding  quite  why  it  assailed  her,  but  understanding 
enough,  anyhow.  Beside  Roberta  she  was  so  plain.  She  felt 
plain.  ...  It  wasn't  that  she  felt  jealous  of  Roberta:  it  was 
only  that  Roberta  showed  you,  somehow,  the  enormous  possi- 
bilities of  the  human  face.  You  were  crushed  by  the  knowledge 
of  your  own  limitations  just  when  you  wanted  to  look  your 
best.  Caryl  remembered  that  impulsive  cry  of  hers  to  Guen, 
that  sudden  frantic  longing  after  an  "harmonious"  face,  and 
Guen's  laugh  as  she  drew  her  "unwarrantable  conclusions" 
("You  should  take  the  precaution  of  falling  in  love  with  a  man 
who  never  looks  at  faces!").  It  was  impossible  to  believe  there 
were  such  men.  All  men  looked  at  faces.  Faces  mattered  to 
them  tremendously.  You  might  despise  them  for  it,  but  you 
couldn't  alter  them. 

To-day  she  paused  in  her  admiration  for  Roberta's  unbound 
hair  to  remember  that  little  twinge  of  pain  she  had  suffered 
when  Dick  had  admired  it  a  few  yesterdays  ago.  And  not  only 
the  incident  of  the  hair,  but  something  that  had  belonged  to 
the  evening  that  followed  it. 

They  had  started  out,  the  three  of  them,  for  a  stroll,  and  at 
the  last  moment  Caryl  had  run  back  to  change  a  shoe  which 
was  chafing  her  heel.  There  was  a  knot  in  one  of  the  laces, 
which  delayed  her,  so  that  when  she  got  down  to  the  gate  Dick 
and  Roberta  were  out  of  sight.  They  had  not  said  in  which 
direction  they  were  going  (Caryl  was  positive  about  that),  and 
she  set  off  along  the  route  of  a  walk  she  and  Dick  most  favoured, 
which  they  had  named  the  Triangle.  But  a  quarter  of  an  hour's 
brisk  walking  failed  to  bring  her  on  the  heels  of  the  earlier 
starters.  She  stood  by  a  field  gate  and  considered  the  situation. 
"This  is  absurd,"  she  thought;  "they  might  have  waited  a 
minute."  She  didn't  see  how  they  could  have  come  this  way, 
for  the  road  ran  straight  from  the  point  at  which  she  stood, 
and  had  they  been  in  front  she  must  have  seen  them.  It  wasn't 


INTRUSION  259 

possible  they  had  reached  the  little  wood  where  you  turned 
off  and  came  back  along  the  third  side  of  the  Triangle.  She 
knew  it  wasn't  possible  and  yet  she  went  on.  She  came  to  the 
little  wood,  pushed  open  its  swing  gate  and  slammed  it  after 
her.  If  they  had  really  come  this  way;  if  they  were  actually 
down  there  in  the  wood,  they  would  hear  that  and  wait  for  her. 
But  they  weren't  in  the  wood:  that  was  soon  apparent.  She 
had  the  wood  to  herself — she  and  the  birds  and  the  sunset. 

And  in  the  wood  she  sat  down  on  a  fallen  tree  trunk,  not 
looking  at  the  sunset  and  desperately  inclined  to  tears.  She 
was  tired ;  her  shoe  was  chafing  her  heel  again,  and — Dick  and 
Roberta  had  taken  her  beautiful  evening  and  annihilated  it. 
And  Caryl  hated  them  for  it.  She  hated  Dick  and  Roberta. 

She  sat  in  the  wood  a  long  time,  but  presently  she  got  up 
and  went  on  along  the  path  out  on  to  the  hill  from  which  the 
long  road,  curving  and  curving,  led  eventually  home.  She  had 
walked  slowly,  not  alone  because  her  foot  pained  her,  but 
because  she  did  not  want  to  hurry:  she  did  not  want  to  meet — 
them.  The  sunset  had  flickered  out  in  a  palely-reflected 
golden  light  through  massed  trees  there  at  the  top  of  the  hill 
behind  her,  and  up  the  darkly-blue  sky  a  yellow  moon  came 
climbing  slowly.  The  fragrance  and  sweetness  of  the  July 
night  stabbed  into  her,  so  that  her  dull,  inexplicable  misery  left 
her.  She  took  off  the  shoe  that  was  hurting  her,  and  then  the 
gravel  roadway  hurt  her  instead.  She  took  off  the  other  shoe 
and  walked  on  the  grass  that  edged  the  road.  There  was  a 
heavy  dew:  it  came  through  her  thin  stockings  and  drenched 
her  feet.  When  she  got  home  she  would  have  a  hot  bath  and 
go  straight  to  bed.  She  must  remember  that:  a  summer  cold 
was  so  hateful.  .  .  .  But  she  didn't  remember,  for  as  she  came 
in  at  the  gate  of  the  Cottage  Dick  moved  out  of  the  strong  light 
of  the  hall  into  the  soft  darkness  of  the  night.  A  little  behind 
him  Caryl  could  see  the  gleam  on  Roberta's  wonderful  hair. 
Dick's  voice  rang  out. 

"Where  on  earth  have  you  been?  We  waited  hours  down 
there  by  Walling's  Farm." 

Caryl  stood  still  at  the  gate.  The  moonlight  seemed  to  be 
making  Dick's  face  very  white.  "I  never  dreamt  you  were 
going  that  way,"  she  said.  A  cold  hand  had  clutched  at  her 
heart. 

Roberta's  voice  from  the  doorway : 


2,60  INTRUSION 

"But  we  said  that  way.  I  called  out  to  you.  .  .  .  Down 
past  Walling's.  .  .  ." 

The  cold  hand  became  a  red-hot  iron.  Her  voice  rang  with 
the  pain  of  it. 

"None  of  us  said  which  way  we  were  going.  But  of  course 
I  thought  we  were  going  the  Triangle  walk.  Why,  Dick  and 
J  always  go  that  way.  .  .  ." 

Dick's  voice  again: 

"I'm  awfully  sorry,  old  girl.  It  never  occurred  to  me.  .  .  . 
It's  miles  round  by  the  wood.  I  thought  we  were  just  going 
for  a  stroll.  Really,  I'm  most  awfully  sorry." 

He  had  forgotten  her  walk  .  .  .  their  walk  .  .  .  the  walk 
they  had  taken  together  hundreds  of  times,  to  which  when  they 
agreed  upon  a  walk  their  feet  turned  instinctively.  Extraor- 
dinary how  a  thing  like  that  could  hurt.  Caryl  swept  on  into 
the  house,  past  Dick,  past  the  glowing,  radiant  vision  of  Roberta 
in  the  doorway.  In  the  hall  she  stopped  to  hang  up  her  hat. 
There  was  a  queer  burning  sensation  in  her  throat  and  at  the 
back  of  her  eyes.  Her  voice  slipped  in  like  a  knife  between 
Dick's  explanations  and  Roberta's  apologies. 

"You  needn't  explain  or  apologise,"  she  said.  "You  did  it 
on  purpose.'* 

For  a  second  she  stared  at  them,  head  up,  eyes  flashing,  hold- 
ing her  shoes  in  one  hand  by  the  laces.  Then  with  one  swift 
movement  she  dropped  the  shoes  and  ran  quickly  up  the  stairs 
into  her  room. 

Later,  Dick  tapping  at  her  door  and  his  voice,  pleading, 
"Caryl  ...  let  me  in,  darling."  And  the  sound  of  Caryl's 
sobs  filtered  through  the  doorway  even  while  she  hardened  her 
heart  and  would  not  let  him  in. 

In  the  morning  she  went  downstairs  and  apologised.  She 
had  a  cold  and  a  blistered  heel,  but  neither  mattered  because 
Dick  was  so  penitent  and  suggested  running  over  to  Henley 
and  spending  the  day  on  the  river.  .  .  . 

Roberta  was  very  sweet  about  it.  She  accepted  Caryl's 
apologies  and  effaced  herself  quite  beautifully  and  humbly. 
Caryl  felt  she  had  been  horrid  to  her — simply  horrid.  And  she 
bore  her  no  grudge  at  all.  Her  self-effacement  was  complete. 

And  not  on  that  Henley  day  only,  but  for  the  remaining 
evenings  after  dinner.  Three  of  them — sweet  enough,  you'd 
have  thought,  to  have  wiped  out  the  memory  of  that  other 


INTRUSION  261 

which  had  been  so  singularly  unsuccessful.  You'd  have  sworn 
you'd  forgotten  all  about  it.  And  yet,  here  you  were,  remem- 
bering it  again  this  morning.  Caryl  took  herself  sharply  to 
task. 

"How  long  is  that  hair  going  to  take  to  dry?"  she  enquired. 

"It's  nearly  dry.     Why?" 

"Well,  can't  we  go  out?  I  can't  work — the  weather's  too 
hot  or  something.  .  .  .  Do  come!" 

Nothing  loath,  Roberta  went  off  to  get  ready,  and  Caryl 
amused  herself  by  looking  at  the  current  copy  of  The  Miscel- 
lany, which  contained  a  review  by  Guen  of  somebody's  book 
and  a  sonnet  of  Allan's  about  a  view  from  a  hill  and  what 
"she  said  to  him"  as  they  sat  there  looking  at  it.  Caryl 
hated  it. 

Roberta  came  down  drawing  on  her  gloves.  ("Gloves  on 
the  Heath!"  thought  Caryl.  "Oh,  fair,  fat  woman,  whom 
nobody  loves.  Why  do  you  walk  through  the  fields  in  gloves?") 
"Seen  Allan's  poem?"  said  Roberta.  "The  girl  in  it's  me." 

"Oh,  rot!"  said  Caryl  politely. 

Roberta  laughed. 

"Fact.  ...  I  always  say  the  wrong  thing,  you  know.  I  get 
on  Allan's  nerves  most  horribly,  shouldn't  wonder.  .  .  .  He 
ought  to  have  married  someone  lit'ry — like  that  Miss  Hervey." 

"I  think  it's  perfectly  beastly  of  you  to  say  things  like  that," 
Caryl  flashed  out, 

"Why  not — if  they're  true?  ...  Of  course,  it's  awfully  nice 
of  you  to  stick  up  for  me:  but,  well,  I'm  not  the  sort  of  wife 
for  Allan."  Roberta  looked  at  Caryl  out  of  pathetic  hazel 
eyes.  Her  mouth  quivered.  "People  who  write  ought  to  marry 
people  who  write  ...  or  people  who  understand  what  they 
write,  anyway.  Of  course,  if  you've  got  plenty  of  money  it 
doesn't  matter  so  much." 

"I  don't  see  what  money's  got  to  do  with  it." 

"Oh,  well,  you  would  fast  enough  if  you  were  married.  .  .  . 
I  mean,  if  you've  got  money  you  needn't  be  lonely.  .  .  .  You 
can  go  about  on  your  own." 

"Are  you  lonely,  Berta?" 

"Well,  I  should  be  ...  rather  ...  if  it  weren't  for  you. 
Oh,  I  don't  blame  Allan.  After  all,  birds  of  a  feather,  you 
know.  .  .  .  It's  only  natural.  If  I  were  Allan  I'm  sure  I 


262  INTRUSION 

should  want  to  talk  to  Miss  Hervey  quite  as  much  as  he  does." 

"But  how  often  does  Allan  see  Madeleine?" 

"Oh,  only  at  Guen's  tea-parties,  I  s'pose.  ...  I  don't 
know.  I  never  ask;  but  he  goes  there  every  afternoon  now 
Guen's  at  the  Attic.  .  .  .  Oh,  I  don't  mean  he  goes  to  see  Miss 
Hervey.  But  it  takes  up  time,  and  then  when  he  comes  home 
he  has  to  work  in  the  evenings,  and  whenever  I  suggest  going 
out  he  can't  spare  the  time.  ...  It  isn't  exactly  lively,  for 
me.  .  .  .  However,  are  we  ready?" 

They  were  and  they  set  out.  Caryl  was  very  talkative  on  the 
way  down  to  the  tube;  but  her  thoughts  moved  as  quickly  as 
her  tongue.  She  was  thinking  that  it  was  a  shame  if  Allan  was 
really  being  beastly  to  Roberta;  if  he  was  neglecting  her  .  .  . 
making  her  unhappy.  These  writing  people!  How  absurd 
they  were — always  imagining  that  nothing  mattered  except  the 
making  of  books  and  articles.  Books  were  all  right  in  their 
own  way,  of  course,  but  they  were,  at  bottom,  a  bloodless 
substitute  for  life.  In  a  stupendous  assembly  of  books,  the 
sort  of  sight  you  stared  at  in  the  Reading  Room  of  the  British 
Museum,  there  was  something  positively  indecent.  Anton 
Tchehov  was  right  when  he  said  in  one  of  his  letters  that  to 
have  at  the  end  of  life  nothing  but  a  collection  of  books  was 
horrible.  .  .  .  One  could  read  Tchehov  because  he  didn't 
attempt  to  squeeze  all  life  between  the  covers  of  a  book, 
because  he  knew  it  couldn't  really  be  done.  Besides,  there 
were  enough  books  in  the  world  already;  Caryl  could  see  no 
reason  at  all  for  adding  to  them.  And  that  Allan  could  was 
no  reason  at  all  for  making  Roberta  unhappy. 


For  a  week  Caryl  did  little  work,  devoting  herself  to  Roberta, 
until  a  word  from  her  mother  (who  thought  she  was  over- 
doing it)  pulled  her  up.  She  settled  down  then  and  did  a 
fortnight's  solid  reading,  whilst  the  weather  broke  up  and 
became  wet  and  cold,  and  plans  for  week-ending  at  the  Cottage 
came  to  nothing.  Dick  was  somewhere  in  the  Midlands,  where 
it  rained  (so  he  wrote,  despondent)  everything  but  orders. 
Then  suddenly  the  sun  appeared,  briefly  beautiful,  and  with 
it  a  letter  from  Dick  announcing  his  return  on  the  Saturday. 
Caryl  received  the  letter  on  the  Thursday  evening,  and  on  the 


INTRUSION  263 

Friday  afternoon  she  put  away  her  work  and  went  round  to 
Meldon  Avenue  to  see  if  Roberta  was  at  home  and  if  she'd 
come  out  somewhere  and  have  tea.  The  sun  and  the  promise 
of  Dick  seemed  altogether  too  much  that  afternoon  for  Caryl. 
Work  became  suddenly  impossible. 

Roberta  was  at  home.  She  came  to  the  door,  flushed  and 
beautiful  and  in  one  of  her  nicest  frocks.  "I  thought  you 
were  hard  at  it!"  she  said.  "Guess  who's  here?"  "Can't!" 
'Caryl  said  and  then  her  eyes  fell  upon  a  pair  of  gloves  upon 
vhe  table  in  Roberta's  hall.  She  picked  them  up  and  looked 
at  them. 

"Dick!"  she  said  and  felt  the  colour  flaming  in  the  face  she 
turned  enquiringly  towards  Roberta. 

Roberta  nodded.  "I  ran  into  him  to-day  coming  along  to 
you.  I  said  he'd  catch  it  for  coming  home  before  time  and 
disturbing  you.  .  .  .  He  said  he  hadn't  thought  of  that  .  .  . 
that  he'd  better  take  the  jigger  back  and  go  off  somewhere  on 
his  own.  ...  I  asked  him  to  come  in  for  tea  ...  he  wouldn't 
until  I  said  you  might  drop  in  before  he  went  I  thought  the 
sun  might  tempt  you  out.  .  .  ." 

"It  did,"  said  Caryl,  oppressed,  somehow,  by  Roberta's  volu- 
bility. Something  had  gone  wrong  with  her  voice.  She  couldn't 
control  it.  She  was  horribly  aware  that  Dick  had  come  out 
of  Roberta's  little  drawing-room  and  was  coming  towards 
her.  She  didn't  move;  but  all  her  being  quivered  with  the 
sense  that  flooded  her  that  he  had  been  standing  just  inside 
the  door  of  the  room,  listening  to  what  Roberta  had  said.  It 
was  as  though  he  had  been  waiting  in  the  wings  for  his  cue. 

"We  never  really  thought  you'd  come!"  said  his  voice  behind 
her.  She  made  a  superhuman  effort  and  turned  to  face  him, 
her  hands  clenched  tightly  against  Roberta's  hall  table.  The 
colour  had  faded  from  her  brown  face,  her  eyes  were  surpris- 
ingly bright,  her  chin  had  an  angry  tilt. 

"I'm  quite  sure  you  didn't,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  don't  be  ridiculous,  Caryl,"  Roberta  said.  "Come 
and  have  some  tea." 

She  led  the  way  into  the  room  where  across  a  chair  lay  a 
close-fitting  hat  and  veil  of  Roberta's  and  on  another  Roberta's 
shower-proof  coat  of  rust  red.  Without  a  word  Caryl  crossed 
to  the  French  window,  opened  it  and  stepped  out  into  the 
garden,  and  there,  by  Roberta's  kitchen  door,  stood  Dick's 


264  INTRUSION 

motor-cycle  and  sidecar.  Gazing  at  it  Caryl  lived  through  an 
awful  moment.  Her  world  rocked.  It  wasn't  true.  It  simply 
wasn't  true,  this  story  they  had  told  her. 

Whether  Dick  had  come  home  early  by  accident  or  by  design 
this  afternoon's  encounter  was  no  accident.  Dick  and  Roberta 
were  going  out  together.  That  was  certain.  If  she  had  been 
half  an  hour  later  they  would  have  been  gone  and  she  would 
have  known  nothing  about  it.  Here  was  Dick's  sidecar  and 
there,  in  that  room,  where  they  expected  her  to  have  tea,  were 
Roberta's  hat  and  cloak — the  little  close-fitting  hat  and  veil 
and  the  rainproof  coat  which  on  a  day  like  this  Roberta  would 
never  have  worn  if  she  hadn't  being  going  in  the  sidecar.  And 
that  pretty  frock  of  Roberta's — would  she  have  worn  that  if 
she  hadn't  been  expecting  Dick?  Three  weeks  since  Dick  had 
gone  away  and  on  his  return  he  comes  straight  to  Roberta. 
He  gave  her  this  first  afternoon:  this  first  afternoon  of  sun- 
shine. .  .  .  Oh,  she  simply  couldn't  bear  it.  What  did  it 
matter  whether  Roberta's  story  of  her  meeting  with  him  was 
true?  What  wasn't  true  was  that  Roberta  had  beguiled  him 
with  thoughts  of  Caryl — with  the  hope  that  he  might  see  her 
without  having  it  on  his  conscience  that  he  had  "disturbed" 
her  work.  He  hadn't  wanted  her  to  come.  She  was  horribly 
certain  of  that — -with  the  hideous  finality  of  certainty  that 
leaves  you  quivering  as  from  a  physical  blow.  She  turned 
and  walked  back  into  the  drawing-room. 

Dick  was  there  alone.  He  stood  by  the  mantelshelf,  hands 
in  pockets,  looking  glum.  Caryl  came  in  and  sat  on  the  arm  of 
a  chair  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

"Do  you  usually  take  the  sidecar  away  with  you  on  your 
business  expeditions?"  she  asked. 

Dick  looked  at  her. 

"Don't  be  idiotic,"  he  said  shortly.  "I  went  home  and  got 
the  beastly  thing  on  purpose  to  take  you  out." 

"Or  Roberta?"  said  Caryl. 

Dick  came  over  to  where  she  sat  and  put  his  hands  on  hei 
arms.  She  could  feel  his  fingers,  warm  and  deliberate,  througl 
her  thin  voile  frock.  His  eyes  had  not  lost  their  lurking 
suspicion  of  a  smile:  they  seemed  now  to  be  smiling  do\ 
into  her  own — pathetic,  appealing — as  she  sat  there,  with  his 
hands  upon  her,  her  shoulders  drooping  with  the  blind,  swift 
misery  that  had  descended  upon  her. 

"You  blessed  idiot!"  said  Dick. 

She  dropped  her  face  against  his  arm.     He  could  feel  he 


INTRUSION  265 

kissing  his  sleeve,  pressing  herself  against  it.  She  was  not 
crying:  save  for  that  passionate  pressure  against  his  arm — 
that  caressing  movement  of  her  mouth — she  was  still  as  a 
stone. 

"It's  all  right,"  he  said,  "it's  all  right." 

She  stood  up  and  stared  at  him  out  of  tragic  dark  eyes. 

"Dick — I  must  go  home,"  she  said. 

"Without  any  tea?" 

"Tea?    Oh,  Dick,  I  couldn't " 

The  expression  in  her  eyes  baffled  him,  and  he  wished  she'd 
stand  up  straight  in  that  arrow-like  way  he  had  always  thought 
a  part  of  her.  Even  while  he  thought  it  she  did  it.  He  held 
out  his  hand  and  drew  her  to  him.  He  felt  her  elusiveness — 
had  an  air  of  gathering  it  and  her  up  together.  She  shut  her 
eyes  and  endured  his  kisses,  unresponsive. 

"Dick  ...  I  want  to  go  home,"  she  said  when  he'd  finished. 

"You  shall  .  .  .  when  you've  kissed  me." 

"I  can't  .  .  .  not  now.  .  .  ." 

She  was  standing  straight  again:  still  darkly  tragic  her  eyes 
met  his. 

"I'm  going  home,"  she  said,  "now." 

"It'll  look  so  absurd.  .  .  .  Berta's  getting  tea." 

You  could  hear  her  at  it  in  there  in  the  kitchen.  Caryl 
shook  her  head. 

"I  must  go  home,"  she  said.     "Don't  come,  please.  .  .  ." 

"Not  come?  Of  course  I'm  coming.  Don't  be  an  ass."  He 
stood  in  the  doorway,  barring  her  exit.  Her  head  went  up. 

"Dick,  please  ...  I  can't  bear  it  if  you  come." 

"Aren't  you  being  rather  idiotic?"  he  asked  her. 

"Probably,"  she  said. 

He  lowered  his  arms  and  let  her  go.  He  watched  her  walk 
down  the  narrow  hall  to  the  front  door.  She  opened  it  and 
was  gone.  She  had  left  him  ...  in  there  .  .  .  with  Roberta  .  .  . 
to  have  tea.  Why  not?  Wasn't  that  why  he  had  gone  there? 

Was  it?  Did  she  really  believe  it?  She  didn't  know.  She 
didn't  see  how  she  was  ever  going  to  know.  And  then  the 
thought,  hot  and  biting,  like  acid  dropping  on  her  heart:  "How 
can  I  go  on — if  I  don't?" 

Tea  was  over  when  she  reached  Adelaide  Lodge,  but  Alice 
brought  up  a  cup  to  her.  She  drank  it  and  sat  there  over  her 
books  until  the  soft  gong  in  the  hall  announced  the  serving 


£66  INTRUSION 

of  their  evening  meal.  She  brushed  her  hair,  averting  her 
eyes  from  the  cartoon  above  her  dressing-table  of  the  Young 
Person  Who  Means  To  Be  Happy,  and  in  her  crushed  voile 
frock  went  down  to  the  meal  and  the  inquisitorial  gaze  of  the 
family  and  its  interest  in  her  afternoon. 

The  first  five  minutes  were  a  blur,  in  which  she  heard  herself 
saying  that  Roberta  had  been  at  home,  but  was  engaged  and 
couldn't  come  out.  Pen  said,  "Engaged?  Oh,  too  busy  to 
come  out.  That  didn't  sound  a  bit  like  Roberta.  .  .  ."  And 
her  mother:  "You  couldn't  have  gone  far,  dear.  Oh,  yes,  it 
lasted  out  the  sunshine,  if  it  comes  to  that.  Artichokes,  dear?" 
Tom  passed  them  to  her.  She  shook  her  head.  "I  hate 
artichokes  .  .  .  such  an  absurd  name  for  a  vegetable!"  Tom 
grinned.  What  time  was  she  expecting  Dick  on  the  morrow? 
She  wasn't.  "He'll  just  come,"  she  said.  "His  letter  only 
said  'Saturday/  "  Tom  Warren  winked  solemnly  across  the 
table  to  her  father,  as  one  who  said,  "These  young  folk  I  And 
calling  themselves  lovers!" 

Oh  no,  they  hadn't  guessed.  They'd  never  believe  she  cared 
as  much  as  this — so  that  it  hurt  in  this  appalling  fashion  even 
to  sight  the  possibility  that  he  cared  less.  .  .  .  Desperate,  she 
dragged  the  truth  out  of  the  corner  of  her  mind  in  which  it 
was  hiding  and  looked  at  it.  What  hurt  her  most  was  the 
thought,  nay  the  fear,  that  Dick  -had  lied  to  her,  that  he  had 
really  been  waiting  there  to  get  his  cue  from  Roberta.  She 
wanted  to  know  if  what  Roberta  said  was  true — if  he  had 
encountered  her  by  accident  on  his  way  to  Adelaide  Lodge 
or  if  he — and  she — had  "arranged"  it  all  beforehand.  Hateful 
that  she  should  suspect  it:  she  wouldn't  have  done  but  for 
that  evening  of  the  walk.  Impossible  to  sponge  some  things 
from  your  mind.  They  left  a  smear.  .  .  . 

That  Dick  could  lie  and  deceive !  Unthinkable !  Yet  here  she 
was,  thinking  it.  She  would  not.  But  to-morrow  Dick  would 
come — and  she  would  know.  But  supposing  he  came  to-night? 
He  wouldn't.  Officially  he  was  still  in  Manchester.  Besides, 
he'd  leave  her  alone.  She  was  certain  of  that — yet  not  too 
certain.  "I  couldn't  see  him  here  .  .  .  to-night.  .  .  ."  Certain 
of  that,  anyhow.  She  couldn't  face  it.  She  gulped  her  coffee, 
ran  upstairs  for  her  hat,  called  Leader  and  announced  she 
was  going  out  to  walk  upon  the  Heath.  If  Dick  came  she 
wouldn't  be  there. 


INTRUSION  267 


He  didn't  come.  They  would  have  told  her  if  he  had. 
And  no  word  in  the  morning.  But  at  three  o'clock  the  sound 
of  his  cycle  in  the  road,  his  voice  in  the  hall  and  the  sound  of 
Alice  laughing  as  she  shut  the  door  upon  him.  (He  was  like 
Jan — he  could  always  make  Alice  laugh!)  Caryl  was  there  in 
the  drawing-room  with  Pen  and  her  mother.  She  had  on  a 
buttercup  frock  of  some  uncrushable  material  (that  beastly 
crushed  voile  of  yesterday!)  and  in  a  passion  of  self-glorifica- 
tion she  had  that  morning  washed  her  hair.  It  stood  now 
like  a  thick  dark  shield  about  her  head,  with  that  suggestion 
of  fluffiness,  that  subtle  hint  at  a  wave  that  redeems  straight 
hair  from  the  charge  of  lankness.  She  had  not  slept  last  night 
and  her  eyes  were  shadowed,  but  beneath  the  clear  olive  of 
her  skin  waved  the  red  banner  of  her  inner  excitement.  At 
the  sound  of  Dick's  arrival  she  looked  up  from  her  book, 
hesitating,  lips  slightly  apart,  a  tiny  frown  beneath  the  straight 
line  of  fringe,  and  while  she  waited  Alice  put  her  head  in  at 
the  door. 

"Mr.  Merrick,  Miss  Caryl.  .  .  ." 

Caryl  got  up  and  went  out  as  one  going  to  execution. 

Dick  wasn't  in  the  hall;  he  was  out  there  in  the  road  doing 
something  to  his  machine.  She  moved  forward  down  the 
steps,  because  out  there,  she  knew,  he  would  not  kiss  her — for 
"all  the  neighbours  to  see."  In  his  sudden,  easy  fashion  he 
turned  and  smiled  upon  her. 

"Hallo!"  he  said. 

She  thought:  "It  can't  be  true  if  he  can  look  at  me  like 
that,  and  then:  "But  if  he  were  lying,  that'd  be  part  of  it  ... 
that  open  frank  look.  .  .  ." 

She  said:  "Are  we  going  out?" 

"Kew,  I  thought." 

He  had  turned  back  to  his  engine  that  was  making  queer, 
excited  noises,  so  that  he  didn't  see  the  way  she  bit  her  lip  or 
the  little  spasm  that  crossed  her  face  like  a  shadow  on  a  blind. 
There  was  nothing  about  her  "Right-o!"  to  show  what  it  was 
going  to  cost  her,  this  afternoon,  to  go  to  Kew.  Because  Kew 
was  bound  up  with  the  magic  of  a  late  February  afternoon, 
with  the  river  slipping  past  the  reeds  and  the  hand  of  evening 
already  in  the  sky.  .  .  .  The  picture  built  itself  up  anew  in 


268  INTRUSION 

her  mind.    How  could  she  possibly  bear  it — this  visit  to  Kew — 
this  afternoon? 

"Will  you  put  your  things  on?  We  ought  to  get  off  pretty 
soon  while  the  fine  day  lasts.  It'll  rain  before  long." 

She  turned  from  him  and  went  back  into  the  hall.  He  did. 
not  come  in — stayed  there  still  fiddling  with  his  engine  until 
she  had  gone  up  to  her  room.  She  knew  exactly  when  he 
came  in.  The  sound  of  his  voice  floated  up  to  her  from  the 
drawing-room  .  .  .  with  Pen's  laughter,  that  ran  up  and  down 
the  scale,  like  the  thing  of  joy  it  was;  and  the  little  pause 
which  meant  that  her  mother  was  speaking.  Anne  Suffield's 
voice  did  not  penetrate:  she  had  that  low,  sweet  voice  the 
old-fashioned  man  found  excellent  in  the  woman  of  yesterday 
and  misses  in  her  daughters. 

Caryl,  summoning  her  courage,  went  down  presently,  stood 
inside  the  door  and  said,  "Ready!"  The  veil  she  had  tied 
over  her  little  straw  hat  seemed  to  give  her  a  fictitious  con- 
fidence, for  through  its  mesh  her  eyes  met  Dick's,  smiling  at 
her  above  a  mouth  that  was  serious.  "You  want  another 
wrap,"  he  said.  "It'll  be  cold  before  we  get  back."  Through 
the  tulle  veil  her  lips  demurred.  After  all,  it  was  July! 

"Only  by  the  calendar,"  Dick  said,  holding  the  door  open 
for  Anne  Suffield  going  in  search  of  a  silk  scarf  of  her  own. 

Pen  and  her  mother  came  and  saw  them  off — watched  Dick 
tucking  her  into  the  sidecar,  coaxing  that  devil,  his  engine, 
running  beside  it  in  encouragement,  jumping  into  his  seat.  .  .  . 
Neither  spoke  as  they  turned  a  bend  in  the  road  and  were  out 
of  sight.  The  engine  saw  to  that.  And  Dick's  speed.  .  .  . 

This  afternoon  he  went  faster  than  ever.  He  rode  recklessly, 
as  though  he  rode  away  from,  rather  than  towards,  something. 
Caryl,  looking  at  the  straight  line  of  his  profile,  saw  that  his 
gaze  was  fixed  upon  the  road  ahead,  his  mouth  set  in  a  grim 
line.  Even  to-day  she  wanted  to  smile,  because  his  eyes  were 
so  like  a  cat's  whiskers — they  seemed  to  tell  him  just  where  he 
could  squeeze  through  an  opening  and  when  he  couldn't.  The 
deadly  precision  of  it  enchanted  and  fascinated  her:  conversa- 
tion was  out  of  the  question.  Besides,  even  if  she  had 
thought  of  anything  to  say  beyond  the  "Dick — it's  simpl) 
marvellous  how  you  do  it"  that  rose  to  her  lips,  she'd  neve 
have  said  it.  Dick  hated  the  girl  who  talked  while  he  steere 
her  through  London  traffic.  "Marjorie  jabbers,"  he  had  saic 


INTRUSION  269 

once  to  Caryl.  "No  pleasure  to  take  her  out  in  the  old  jigger. 
She'd  enjoy  a  bus-ride  as  well!"  You  weren't  likely,  after 
that,  to  catch  Caryl  "jabbering."  Even  when  they  turned  off 
over  Hammersmith  Bridge  and  were  stopped  by  a  policeman 
she  didn't  open  her  mouth.  The  constable  had  given  Dick 
a  friendly  warning  that  he  was  exceeding  the  speed  limit,  and 
Dick  had  evinced  an  intense  surprise.  "Good  girl!"  he  said 
as  he  rode  on.  Not  to  have  given  him  away,  he  meant,  by  so 
much  as  a  smile.  But  she  smiled  now,  though  briefly,  for 
the  thought  stung.  It  had  happened  before :  Dick  was  always 
exceeding  the  speed  limit  and  was  constantly  being  warned 
by  friendly  constables.  Always  he  assumed  that  air  of  inno- 
cent surprise,  of  bland  blankest  astonishment.  And  always 
the  constables  were  taken  in.  It  had  amused  her  before,  but 
to-day  it  didn't  amuse  her  at  all,  because  she  could  think  of 
nothing  save  that  if  he  could  do  it  here — where,  after  all,  it 
didn't  matter — he  might  do  it  where  it  did.  And  you'd  never 
know — any  more  than  the  constables — that  he  was  deceiving 
you. 

The  road  to  Kew  wound  by  the  river,  and  though  Caryl 
loved  the  river  she  scarcely  saw  it  this  afternoon,  for  her 
vision  had  turned  inwards  and  she  saw  nothing  but  the  fear 
that  looked  at  her — the  fear  that,  after  all,  she  wasn't  going  to 
know.  With  cold  fingers  that  thought  seemed  to  be  pushing 
her  out  of  a  friendly  world  into  a  region  where  you  were  sure 
of  nothing — believed  in  nothing.  .  .  . 

Then,  at  the  last,  in  the  Kew  Road,  sanity  opened  the  door 
of  her  misery  and  looked  in  upon  her.  Dick  had  stopped — 
was  there  at  a  greengrocer's  buying  her  cherries. 

"I'll  put  the  jigger  up  here!"  he  said,  coming  over  to  her 
with  the  bag  in  his  hands.  "White-hearts.  Real  beauties.  .  .  . 
Think  we'd  better  carry  the  rug,  the  grass  may  be  damp. 
No  .  .  .  you're  going  the  wrong  way  .  .  .  three  doors  to  your 
left.  That's  it.  Sign  of  the  'Shell.' " 

Returning  sanity  pushed  wide  the  door  and  came  right  in. 
Caryl  stood  there  by  the  garage  door  listening  to  what  Dick 
was  saying  to  the  man  in  charge.  "Oh  .  .  .  about  six  ...  no 
thanks  .  .  .  running  splendidly.  .  .  ."  When  he  came  back 
she  put  her  hand  through  his  arm  and  walked  along  towards 
the  Cumberland  Gate.  There  they  paid  their  pennies  and 
walked  in  past  the  high  wall  to  a  spot  they  knew  to  which 


270  INTRUSION 

few  people  came.  Folk  came  to  Kew  to  look  at  the  roses  .  .  . 
to  see  the  "houses."  The  uncultivated  parts  you  might  have, 
an'  you  would,  to  yourself.  And  Dick  and  Caryl  went  to  them 
as  a  matter  of  course,  their  feet  turning  instinctively  along  by 
the  wall.  .  .  . 


And  down  there  under  the  trees  Dick  made  his  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  need  of  confession.  .  .  . 

Caryl,  propped  up  on  her  elbows,  kept  her  face  turned 
slightly  away  from  him,  the  business  of  taking  two  bites  at  a 
cherry  seeming  to  absorb  all  her  attention.  Presently  her 
head  bent  lower.  She  was  not  eating  her  cherries  any  longer, 
but  making  tea-pots  of  them,  twisting  and  detaching  their 
stalks  artfully  to  form  handle  and  spout — a  form  of  industry 
that  seemed  to  require  much  care  and  attention. 

Dick  was  a  long  time  beginning.  Caryl  had  a  sense  of  him 
lighting  a  cigarette;  of  his  arm  sweeping  out  to  throw  the 
match  over  her  head  .  .  .  and  then  what  he  said  seemed  to 
blind  her.  She  was  stunned.  The  cherry  stalk  broke  in  her 
hands.  She  sat  there,  a  cherry  in  each  hand,  what  he  had  said 
ringing  in  her  ears. 

"Darling  ...  it  wasn't  quite  true  ...  all  that  about 
yesterday!" 

Suddenly  strength  came  to  her.  She  lifted  her  head  and 
looked  at  him. 

"You  mean  .  .  .  you  hadn't  met  Roberta  .  .  .  accident- 
ally .  .  .  you'd  arranged  it?" 

"Good  God!     You  think  that  of  me?" 

If  he  had  amplified  that  exclamation,  embroidered  it  with 
self-pity,  she  would  have  flashed  out,  "Why  shouldn't  I? 
Why  shouldn't  I  have  thought  of  it?"  but  the  plain  unvarnished 
statement  stopped  her.  Something  in  the  ring  of  it  and  in 
his  face  hurt  her.  She  hadn't  known  that  anybody's  face 
could  hurt  you.  And  this  was  Dick's.  .  .  . 

She  looked  away,  not  speaking. 

"You  don't  think  so  now?"  he  asked. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Not  now,"  she  said.  She  was  miserable  and  covered  witK 
shame  because  she  had  misjudged  him.  She  was  sure  of  that 
before  he  had  spoken  a  word.  "Not  now,"  she  repeated,  as 


INTRUSION  271 

though  the  repetition  was  a  thing  she  owed  him — a  sort  of 
insufficient  reparation.  Something  humble  and  childlike  looked 
out  of  her  eyes  as  she  waited  for  him  to  speak.  He  did 
presently,  not  looking  at  her.  It  was  quite  true  what  Roberta 
had  said.  Coming  back  a  day  earlier  than  he  expected  from 
Manchester,  he  had  been  coming  on  to  see  Caryl:  he  had 
encountered  Roberta  in  the  High  Street;  she  had  alleged 
Caryl  to  be  "swotting"  and  had  invited  him  to  tea. 

"I  refused.  .  .  ."  Dick  said.  "I  said  you'd  think  it  unkind. 
She  accepted  that.  .  .  .  We  stood  there  talking  a  little  while 
and  she  told  me  there  was  an  account  in  the  Star  she'd  just 
bought  of  the  death  of  some  young  man  she  used  to  know. 
Thorp,  I  think  his  name  was.  He  was  killed  while  out  shooting 
game.  She  seemed  very  upset.  .  .  ." 

Six  cherry  tea-pots,  now,  in  a  neat  row.  Thorp?  Thorp? 
went  her  brain.  Oh  yes,  the  young  man  Allan  and  Roberta 
had  met  at  Shanklin.  .  .  .  Caryl  had  seen  him  once:  tall, 
dark  and  with  Dick's  air  of  saying,  "I'm  so  glad  I'm  alive! 
Life's  so  jolly,  don't  you  think?"  Horrible  to  think  he  was 
dead! 

"We  walked  back  towards  Meldon  Avenue.  I  didn't  think 
about  it  ...  you  know  how  you  do  that  sort  of  thing 
mechanically.  She  talked  about  young  Thorp  .  .  .  they  were 
very  good  pals,  apparently — she'd  missed  him  no  end.  And 
I  remembered  that  letter  of  yours  about  her  being  lonely. 
You  remember?  Anyway,  she  said  she  was  lonely  .  .  .  that 
the  Revolutionary  that  night  was  going  out  to  dinner.  She'd 
gone  out  to  buy  a  paper  because  the  house  was  getting  on  her 
nerves.  .  .  .  And  then  she'd  seen  the  report  of  Thorp's 
death.  ...  It  must  have  been  while  we  were  standing  there 
that  she  renewed  the  invitation  to  tea.  It  seemed  so  silly  to 
make  such  a  fuss.  I  thought  I  could  come  on  to  Adelaide 
Lodge  directly  afterwards.  .  .  .  Anyway,  I  went  .  .  .  took  the 
old  jigger  round  the  back — for  safety.  Really,  Caryl,  that  is 
just  how  it  happened.  I  swear  it,  dear." 

By  the  simple  expedient  of  lengthening  its  spout  Caryl  was 
thoughtfully  converting  her  sixth  cherry  tea-pot  into  a  bron- 
chitis kettle.  Suddenly  she  looked  up  from  it  and  smiled. 

"I  believe  it,"  she  said.  "Let's  chuck  it,  shall  we?  I've 
just  been  a  fool,  that's  all.  Let's  forget  it." 

"But  I  haven't  finished.  .  .  .  You've  got  to  understand  that 


272  INTRUSION 

I  didn't  go  in  to  have  tea  with  Roberta  because  I  thought  you 
might  run  in.  ...  I  didn't  believe  you  would.  .  .  .  And  I  didn't 
go  because — or  not  only  because — I  was  sorry  for  Roberta. 
Besides,  I  didn't  stay  sorry  for  her.  .  .  .  You  see,  it  struck 
me  she  couldn't  be  so  very  cut  up  about  young  Thorp  because 
directly  we  got  in  she  went  upstairs  and  changed  her  frock.  .  .  ." 

Caryl's  eyes  were  looking  at  him  with  a  sort  of  gentle 
patience,  as  though  she  knew  what  he  was  going  to  say,  and 
wondered  how  long  he  was  going  to  take  to  get  it  out. 
Suddenly  she  smiled. 

"You  mean,"  she  said,  "that  you  went  to  tea  with  Roberta 
because  you — wanted  to?" 

He  stared  at  her.     "How  do  you  know?"  he  asked. 

She  said,  "Oh,  it's  quite  simple!  Besides  ...  I  can  under- 
stand that  you  should  want  to  have  tea  with  Roberta.  And 
that  when  she'd  changed  her  frock  you  wanted  it  even  more  .  .  . 
that  you  should  have  suggested  taking  her  for  a  run." 

Dick  continued  to  stare  at  her. 

"It's  quite  right,"  he  said,  "it  did  happen  just  like  that — 
only  it's  wrong,  somehow,  that  you  should  know  it  ...  that 
you  should  understand.  I  thought  women  never  understood 
things  of  that  sort.  Never  knew,  I  mean,  that  a  man  could  be 
attracted,  even  for  a  minute,  by  a  girl  he  didn't  care  a  snap  of 
the  fingers  for." 

She  smiled,  and  the  tender  familiarity  of  it  hurt  him. 

"I  couldn't  bear,"  she  said,  "to  be  like  that  ...  to  be  afraid. 
So  that  I  kept  you  to  myself  .  .  .  made  you  pretend  that  you 
never  looked  at  any  other  girl  .  .  .  never  saw  that  there  are 
hundreds  of  quite  charming  girls  who  are  much  nicer  to  look 
at  than  I  am.  They  say  that  if  you're  in  love  you're  jealous 
.  .  .  that  you  can't  help  it.  The  girls  and  I  at  King's  are 
always  arguing  that  point.  They  think,  most  of  them,  that 
jealousy's  natural.  I  think  it's  mean  .  .  .  loathsome.  If  you're 
really  in  love  you  can't  really  be  jealous,  because  that  means  you 
doubt.  .  .  .  Isn't  that  how  it  seems  to  you?" 

Dick's  face  wore  a  look  of  perplexity. 

"I  don't  know.  ...  I  believe  I  could  be  furiously  jealous. 
I  used  sometimes  to  hate  young  Jack  Heston  with  his  adoring 
eyes  following  you  about." 

A  fat  man  with  an  umbrella  was  crossing  behing  Dick's  back. 
When  he  had  gone  Caryl  said  softly: 


INTRUSION  273 

"You  needn't  be  jealous  of  Jack.  He  knows  there'll  never 
be  anybody  in  the  world  for  me  but  you.  That's  why  it  was 
so  awful  yesterday  when  I  thought  you  were  deceiving  me.  .  .  . 
I  couldn't  bear  that,  Dick.  .  .  .  Whatever  happens,  I  must 
know.  I  can  bear  anything  but  not  knowing." 

"Nothing's  going  to  happen.  ...  I  shan't  pay  Roberta  any 
more  visits  unless  you  come  too." 

"Oh!  but  why  not — if  you  want  to?  I  couldn't  bear  her 
to  think  I'd  forbidden  you.  ...  I  wish  she  hadn't  seen  yesterday 
that  I  minded  .  .  .  such  an  awful  exhibition." 

Dick  smiled. 

"Don't  you  want  to  know  what  we  did  when  you'd  gone." 

"No— it  doesn't  matter." 

But  she  was  torn  suddenly  with  the  hope  that  he  would  tell 
her:  wanted  to  hug  him  when  he  did. 

"I  went  off  home,"  he  said.  "I  saw  you  tearing  off  down 
the  road  and  deliberately  went  in  the  opposite  direction." 

"You  were  angry  with  me?" 

"No,  with  myself.  .  .  .  But  not  angry  enough  to  punish  you 
by  staying  with  Roberta.  .  .  ." 

She  smiled  at  that. 

"Oh,  Dick!"  she  said. 

And  Dick  said:  "Darling — come  over  here." 

She  moved  towards  him. 

"Meet  me  half-way." 

He  obeyed.  He  put  his  hands  on  her  arms  as  he  had  done 
yesterday,  and,  as  it  had  done  yesterday,  his  touch  burned 
through  and  scorched  her.  Suddenly  she  was  at  the  mercy  of 
the  tempestuous  emotion  it  roused  in  her. 

"Oh,  Dick,"  she  said,  "I'd  give  all  the  world  to  be  even 
half  as  beautiful  as  Roberta!" 

Then,  quite  suddenly,  she  burst  into  tears.  When  he  took 
her  in  his  arms  she  hid  her  face  against  his  sleeve  as  she  had 
done  yesterday.  He  drew  her  up  closely  against  him. 

"I  don't  want  you  altered,"  he  said;  "you  are  beautiful — 
beautiful  all  through.  .  .  .  There  isn't  anybody  but  you,  Caryl. 
There  never  will  be.  ...  It's  you  I  want  all  the  time." 

She  sat  up  and  dried  her  eyes.  The  fat  man  with  the 
umbrella  was  coming  back  again. 

"He  thinks  we've  been  quarrelling,"  she  said,  hastily  putting 
her  handkerchief  out  of  sight. 


274  INTRUSION 

"And  we  haven't  been,  have  we,  darling?" 

She  smiled  at  him,  gathering  up  her  cherries. 

"No,"  she  said,  "we've  only  been  trying  to  understand  .  .  . 
to  get  things  right.  .  .  ." 

"And  are  they  right  now?" 

"Absolutely." 

"You  blessed  dear,"  he  said,  and  waited  for  the  fat  man  to 
pass  before  he  kissed  her. 


CHAPTER   FIVE 


DICK  was  in  town  the  greater  part  of  July,  and  those 
few  weeks  represented  for  Caryl  a  period  of  happiness 
she  was  scarcely  to  know  again.  It  was  mixed  up  with 
much  talk  of  Russia  and  Poland,  with  jaunts  to  the  swimming 
baths  and  frantic  journeyings  in  the  sidecar  to  and  fro  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  It  came  to  her  out  of  the  blue  ...  a  golden 
thing  of  love  and  laughter,  in  which  she  not  only  neglected 
her  work,  but  forgot  all  about  it.  John  Suffield,  pleased  with 
Dick's  prowess  in  the  provinces,  was  disposed  to  look  with 
kindly  eyes  upon  his  period  of  partial  slacking  in  those  July 
weeks.  At  the  end  of  them  Caryl  was  going  away  with  her 
mother,  and  Dick's  nose  should  be  kept  more  rigidly  to  the 
grindstone.  He  wasn't  going  to  encourage  any  idea  of  slack- 
ness in  Caryl's  husband.  Caryl,  like  Allan,  thought  money 
didn't  matter — an  extraordinary  conviction  for  his  children  to 
hold,  though  he  expected,  so  far  as  Caryl  was  concerned,  to 
use  her  pride  in  Dick  to  prove  his  own  contrary  conviction. 
Dick  would  know  that  Caryl  didn't  care  for  people  to  fail. 
True,  she  didn't  associate  success  with  money,  but  she  thought 
it  was  "up"  to  you  to  do  what  you  set  out  to  do.  Thus  Caryl's 
father  upon  Caryl  and  the  man  Caryl  loved.  "A  charming 
chap,  that  fiance  of  young  Caryl's,"  he'd  say  to  people  and 
invite  them  home  to  dinner  to  meet  him. 

Throughout  the  doubtful  July  of  nineteen-twenty  Caryl's 
leisure  and  Dick's  seemed  to  be  equally  divided  between  the 
"scouring  England"  campaign  and  the  open-air  swimming 
bath  at  Chiswick.  Occasionally  they  took  Roberta  with  them, 
but  Roberta  did  not  swim  and  did  not  really  care  for  riding  on 
the  carrier  of  a  motor-cycle.  Moreover,  she  did  not  take  kindly 
to  the  goggles  in  which  Caryl  cheerfully  disguised  herself,  and 
a  slight  spill  in  which  she  grazed  her  ankle  was  used  as  an 
excuse  for  discontinuing  a  bad  practice.  Thereafter  their 

275 


276  INTRUSION 

jaunts  h  trois  were  made  minus  the  sidecar,  much  to  Anne 
Suffield's  relief.  "It  really  isn't  safe,  Caryl,"  she'd  said  so 
often;  "and  dear,  I  wish  you'd  ask  Dick  to  drive  a  little  more 
slowly.  It  does  look  so  dreadfully  dangerous." 

They  only  laughed  at  her.  The  risk  was  the  pleasure  of  it, 
they  told  her.  But  John  Suffield  backed  his  wife.  "What  the 
pleasure  is,  going  at  that  rate,  I  can't  see,"  he  said.  "You 
motor-cycle  people  are  the  most  selfish  people  on  the  road. 
You'll  have  your  licence  suspended  some  day,  my  boy,  and 
serve  you  right!" 

"You  haven't  seen  Dick  smile  at  policemen,"  Caryl  ventured. 

"I've  seen  him  smile  at  you,"  said  her  father. 

"Not  at  all  the  same  thing!"  declared  Caryl. 

The  happiness  that  came  to  her  now  was  sunny  and  golden. 
Little  things  went  to  its  make-up,  unconsidered  trifles,  simple 
youthful  adventures  that  spoil  in  the  telling  and  yet  made, 
together,  a  wealth  of  experience  that  sat  blooming  in  Caryl's 
heart  like  a  rose. 

But  Pen  carped. 

"I  can't  think  why  you  cart  Roberta  about  with  you  so 
much,"  she  said  once  to  Caryl.  "Even  for  you  modems  I 
should  have  thought  two  was  company.  .  .  ." 

"But  we  don't  .  .  .  often,"  Caryl  said,  who  felt  an  inward 
twinge  that  "often"  was  not  often  enough.  She  was  worried 
by  the  thought  of  Roberta,  who  plainly  these  days  was  not 
happy.  To  be  as  pretty  as  all  that  and  to  get  so  little  out  of 
life!  Caryl  was  quite  certain  she  and  Allan  were  not  happy 
together.  Probably  it  wasn't  cither's  fault:  just  that  they  had 
no  interests  in  common.  Guen,  she  knew,  had  always  main- 
tained that.  But  Roberta  was  so  loyal:  she  never  "discussed" 
Allan.  It  was  always  just  casually  you  heard  that  he  spent 
all  his  evenings  over  his  books  and  papers,  that  he  sat  up  far 
into  the  night;  that  Roberta,  in  town  with  a  friend,  had  seen 
Allan  with  Miss  Hervey  at  Oxford  Circus  Station.  .  .  .  She 
never  complained.  Things  just  came  out,  as  things  will,  of 
course.  But  Caryl,  calling  Roberta  friend  as  well  as  sister, 
and  absurdly  sorry  for  her,  could  not  leave  her  entirely  out  of 
her  own  happiness.  On  those  occasions  when  Roberta  came  to 
Adelaide  Lodge  to  tea  or  dinner,  and  Caryl  and  Dick  went  off 
together  somewhere  afterwards,  Caryl  would  be  worried  by  the 
sight  of  the  wistful  look  in  Roberta's  eyes,  the  soft  envy  of  her 


INTRUSION  277 

"Good-bye  .  .  .  lucky  people!"  The  least  she  could  do  upon 
occasion  was  to  ask  Roberta  to  share  her  own  happiness,  which 
was  so  tremendous  she  felt  she  had  scarcely  any  right  to  it. 

Yet  Pen  continued  to  carp,  sniffing  with  irritating  regularity 
at  what  she  called  an  "idiotic  business."  Caryl,  she  indicated, 
was  beyond  her.  All  this  nonsense  talk  of  "possession,"  this 
pooh-poohing  of  natural  jealousy!  Possessive?  Of  course  love 
was  possessive.  One  man,  one  woman — ridiculous  to  pretend 
otherwise.  Besides,  it  only  led  to  trouble.  Certainly  she 
wouldn't  have  been  so  calm  about  it  if  Tom  showed  as  much 
interest  in  a  pretty  girl  as  Dick  showed  in  Roberta.  And  yet 
there  wasn't  anything  to  go  upon:  nothing  you  could  label 
or  lay  hold  of.  Seen  together,  Dick  and  Roberta  seemed  to 
have  extraordinarily  little  to  say  to  each  other;  moreover,  what 
Dick  said  often  had  an  edge  to  it.  He  was  frequently  rude: 
not  just  carelessly  rude,  but  deliberately  so,  as  if  he  disliked 
Roberta  and  really  wanted  to  hurt  her.  You'd  have  sworn 
Roberta  didn't  mind,  she  took  it  with  such  astonishing  good 
humour  and  with  a  quiet,  inscrutable  smile;  a  smile  that 
seemed  to  hide  things,  that  was  almost  articulate — the  smile  of 
a  woman  who  has  some  secret  inner  knowledge  and  knows  that 
the  man  has  it  too,  that  he  is  struggling  not  to  recognise  it. 
And  when  Caryl,  catching  what;  Dick  had  said,  would  rush  in 
with  some  lightly  worded  reproach,  Roberta  would  stop  smiling. 
Her  face  would  take  on  a  slightly  pained  expression,  as  though 
she  said  to  herself,  "Surely  they  can't  be  going  to  quarrel 
about  me!" 

So  silly  of  Roberta,  Pen  would  think — and  so  conceited.  No 
nice  woman  ("married,  too!")  would  imagine  that  an  engaged 
couple  could  quarrel  about  her.  And  yet  those  evenings  when 
Roberta  and  Allan  came  to  dinner  and  afterwards  there  was 
dancing,  how  could  Caryl  endure  it?  For  Roberta  danced  far 
too  frequently  with  Dick.  She  gave  him  every  waltz.  You 
couldn't  help  noticing  it. 

And  Caryl  could  endure  it.  "Oh,  I  hate  waltzing!"  she 
said  airily.  "I  can't  see  why  anybody  bothers  about  it  to-day!" 

But  Roberta  said  she  "adored"  it  (even  Pen  could  read  that 
in  her  ecstatic  face),  and  Dick  was  "such  a  ripping  partner." 
"So  are  you,  silly!"  Caryl  would  say.  She  thought  Roberta 
danced  divinely.  Pen,  of  course,  merely  thought  she  danced 
a  good  deal  too  frequently  with  Dick. 


278  INTRUSION 

However,  at  the  end  of  July  Caryl  went  away  with  her 
mother  and  father  to  the  Cornish  coast.  Pen  remained  behind 
to  keep  house  for  a  husband  unable  to  get  away  so  early.  Dick, 
on  and  off,  was  to  be  still  in  town,  and  though  Cornwall  was 
a  long  way  off  and  railway  fares  were  the  devil,  he  promised 
himself  at  least  a  few  days  of  Caryl's  fortnight  if  they  could 
be  worked  in. 

The  Wokingham  cottage  was  neglected.  Save  for  a  couple 
of  week-ends  nobody  had  used  it.  The  summer  was  too  bad. 
Nobody  could  stand  the  country  in  wet  weather,  except  Caryl 
and  Dick,  who  swore  they  liked  it.  And  with  nobody  to 
chaperon  them  the  Cottage  was  useless  even  to  them.  (Pre- 
sumably even  they  saw  that ! )  John  Sumeld  swore  at  it  mildly 
as  a  needless  expense  and  wished  the  Hestons  would  take  it  off 
his  hands  again.  But  the  Hestons  wouldn't.  The  Hestons  were 
enjoying  life  at  Herne  Bay — at  least,  Marjorie  was,  amid  the 
delights  of  a  new  flirtation,  with  a  young  Army  captain  well 
in  tow.  Meantime  there  were  threats  of  war  and  strikes: 
Labour  victories  and  Labour  conferences,  and  peace  rocking 
perilously  again  on  the  knife-edge  of  diplomacy.  .  .  . 

Guen  had  gone  back  to  Green  Hedges  at  the  beginning  of 
July,  and  Allan  had  lost  in  the  first  round  of  his  fight  with 
Madeleine  for  the  retention  of  the  new  lease  of  their  friend- 
ship. There  was  to  be  nothing  now  but  those  occasional  meet- 
ings when  they  might  both  choose  the  same  Thursday  evening 
to  come  and  talk  to  Guen. 

"But  has  it  struck  you  that  it  isn't  Guen  we  talk  to?"  Allan 
asked. 

It  had,  Madeleine  said.  Her  dark  eyes  surveyed  him  calmly. 
No  suggestion  of  agitation  in  their  brown  depths.  "It's  so 
difficult,"  she  said,  "to  throw  off  a  bad  habit!" 

It  was  the  nearest  she  had  come  to  any  definite  reference  to 
the  days  of  their  old  friendship,  and  <even  now  she  backed 
away  from  it  instantly,  ratifying  her  refusal  by  a  gentle  "good- 
bye." Impossible  to  open  up  the  topic  afresh.  Allan  was 
beaten:  he  knew  it. 

There  would  be  the  second  round.  . 


INTRUSION  279 


It  came,  most  unexpectedly,  just  a  week  later  when  Allan 
dropped  in  to  a  concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall  and,  promenading 
in  the  interval,  came  face  to  face  with  Madeleine.  It  was  a 
mixed  evening  of  Bach  and  Rimsky-Korsakov  and  MacDowell, 
and  finding  a  couple  of  seats  belonging  to  temerarious  people 
who  had  ventured  upon  stretching  their  legs,  Allan  and  Made- 
leine sat  down  and  grumbled  that  the  Rimsky-Korsakov  had 
not  included  Scheherazade. 

"After  all,"  Madeleine  said  presently,  "we're  ungrateful  to 
complain,  because  they  might  have  given  us  Saint  Saens,"  and 
out  of  the  crowded  past  a  memory  came  drifting  to  Allan. 
"Of  course,"  he  said,  "you  don't  like  Saint  Saens."  And  he 
remembered  her  exact  phrase:  "He  makes  quite  delightful 
noises.  ..." 

It  .struck  him  that  he  wasn't  doing  much  with  this  second 
round.  It  struck  him,  further,  that  Madeleine  did  not  mean 
him  to  do  much  with  it.  He  heard  her  say  that  she  wished 
Sir  Henry  Wood  would  cut  out  the  vocal  items,  because  mere 
technical  skill  afflicted  her,  it  seems,  as  Saint  Saens  afflicted 
them  both — it  meant  nothing.  And  nobody's  singing  this  eve- 
ning had  meant  much  except  that  of  the  woman  who'd  sung  the 
thing  from  Butterfly.  Old-fashioned  and  quite  wrong,  perhaps, 
to  admire  the  tuneful  Puccini,  but  they  couldn't  help  it.  Extraor- 
dinarily moving  that  Finale  in  the  first  Act  of  Butterfly.  .  .  . 
Opera  didn't  affect  Madeleine  like  that  as  a  rule.  It  was  so 
difficult  to  get  worked  up  about  the  sorrows  people  recounted 
in  song.  A  queer  artificial  convention  this  of  opera,  this 
singing  of  the  things  which  happened  to  you.  And  yet,  Allan 
hazarded,  not  so  queer,  after  all.  The  earliest  poems  and 
stories  were  always  sung,  and  the  first  sagas.  Widsith  singing 
at  the  Court  of  Eormanric:  the  poet  of  Beowulf  and  The  Fight 
at  Finnsburg.  "It's  we  who've  grown  artificial,"  he  said,  "who 
no  longer  sing  of  our  adventures." 

"Isn't  it  because  we  have  so  few?"  Madeleine  asked.  "Life's 
become  essentially  undramatic — grey,  not  black,  don't  you 
think  ?  Wordsworth  knew  that.  Urban  life  is  not  adventurous : 
it's  full  not  of  physical,  but  of  mental  fights.  It's  impulse, 
not  action,  our  life  to-day." 

He  looked  at  her;  saw  that  her  eyes  were  steady,  empty  of 


280  INTRUSION 

concern,  that  her  face  showed  nothing  of  embarrassment.  Her 
hands,  clasped  loosely  in  her  lap,  her  programme  beneath  them, 
were  quite  still.  They,  no  more  than  her  face,  showed  hint  of 
trouble — gave  anything  away.  It  came  to  Allan  in  that 
moment  that  she  was  happy — really  happy,  in  the  way  Words- 
worth must  have  been  in  a  wood,  and  to-night  he  was  In  the 
mood  to  envy  her:  to  envy  her  the  happiness  she  had  wrested 
from  life's  unwilling  hands. 

That  second  round !  Nothing  to  hope  for  from  that.  Allan 
abandoned  it.  "What  have  you  been  doing  with  yourself 
lately?"  he  asked. 

Crowds  of  things,  it  seemed.  She  was  very  busy  over  Mr. 
Osenton's  new  book — a  startling  Shakespearean  theory  for 
which  the  critics  would  slay  him.  Quite  soon,  when  the  book 
was  through  the  Press,  they  were  going  off  to  Devon.  ...  At 
odd  moments  she  had  found  time  to  go  to  some  Exhibition  and 
to  some  Food  Reform  Lecture.  (The  queer  things  they  sent 
people  tickets  for!)  The  exhibitions,  in  their  way,  had  been 
hilarious:  the  Food  Lecture  depressing.  It  had  told  her  nothing 
except  that  all  her  life  she'd  been  eating  all  the  wrong  things 
at  all  the  wrong  times. 

The  audience  began  to  straggle  back.  The  promenade 
slowed  down  and  was  still.  Several  people  said  "Sh-h-h"  too 
loudly  and  too  late,  so  that  the  opening  notes  of  Poeme  Erotique 
were  lost.  So,  too,  was  the  opportunity  to  reopen  that  ques- 
tion of  another  meeting.  And,  somehow,  walking  down  Regent 
Street  to  the  tube  none  other  presented  itself.  Nothing  could 
have  been  more  casual  than  their  farewell  and  nothing  more 
remarkable  than  that  Roberta  should  have  been  there  to  see  it. 

She  came  in  within  ten  minutes  of  his  arrival. 

"I  just  missed  your  train,"  she  said. 

"My  train?" 

"The  one  you  caught  at  Oxford  Circus.  I  was  behind  you 
in  the  queue  at  the  booking  office.  .  .  I've  never  seen  anyone 
look  so  nice  in  that  particular  shade  of  blue  as  Miss  Hervey 
does." 

"You  saw  us?  We  ran  into  each  other  at  the  Queen's  Hall." 

Roberta,  standing  there  drawing  off  her  gloves,  smiled 
understandingly. 

"Oh,  don't  think  I  mind,"  she  said.  "I  shouldn't  care  if  it 
hadn't  been  .  .  accidental." 


INTRUSION  281 

Allan  frowned. 

"And  who've  you  been  gadding  with?" 

"Gadding?  Why  do  you  put  it  like  that?  I've  been  to  the 
show  at  the  Palladium." 

"I  didn't  say  where.    I  said  with  whom." 

"With  Tommy." 

"Oh!  ....  so  that's  started  again,  has  it?" 

"Only  just." 

"Supposing  I  object?" 

"Oh,  don't  be  silly!  Why  should  you?  Tommy's  all  right. 
.  .  .  Besides,  if  I  don't  object  to  your  friends,  I  really  can't 
see  why  you  should  object  to  mine." 

"A  sort  of  blackmail  arrangement,  eh?" 

"Really,"  said  Roberta,  "you're  very  disagreeable.  I  should 
have  thought  it's  much  the  best  for  us  to  go  our  own  ways." 

She  took  off  her  wrap,  hung  it  over  her  arm  and  turned  to 
leave  the  room. 

"Good  night,"  she  said. 

"Good  night,"  he  answered. 

When  she  had  gone  he  stood  there  with  clenched  hands,  as 
he  had  done  so  many  times  before,  wrestling  with  the  desire 
that  assailed  him  to  rush  after  her,  take  her  by  the  shoulders 
and  assert  himself.  But  the  desire  tended  to  grow  fainter.  He 
still  minded  that  she  flung  him  her  careless  "Good  night" 
over  an  indifferent  shoulder.  He  despised  her,  but  he  minded. 
All  his  being  stretched  forward  to  that  day  when  he  would 
not  mind  at  all,  when  he  would  not  suffer.  Yet  to-night  he 
was  subtly  aware  of  some  change  in  her  attitude,  saw  that  her 
cold  indifference  had  been  touched  to  the  faintest  show  of 
interest  in  him  and  his  evening.  For  a  moment  he  wondered 
why,  and  then  suddenly  he  understood.  Roberta  was  interested 
in  this  renewal  of  his  friendship  with  Madeleine  because  she 
might  be  able  to  make  use  of  it.  She  wanted  her  freedom,  and 
she  saw  this  friendship  of  his  with  Madeleine  as  the  key  which 
might  unlock  the  door.  .  .  .  True  to  her  role  of  injured  inno- 
cence, she  would  put  him,  not  herself,  in  the  wrong. 

In  that  one  second  of  understanding  his  mind  was  made  up. 
He  was  not  going  to  run  any  risks  of  that  kind.  Madeleine 
and  he  must  not  meet  again.  .  .  . 

He  was  appalled  by  the  certainty  of  that  piece  of  knowledge; 
but  he  held  to  his  decision,  even  when  Thursday  came  and 


282  INTRUSION 

Roberta,  bedecked  for  Tommy's  foregathering,  supposed  he 
wasn't  "going  her  way."  He  wasn't,  he  said,  going  anybody's 
way.  He  wasn't,  that  evening,  going  out.  .  .  .  Roberta  shrugged 
her  shoulders  and  went  off  alone.  Ten  minutes  later  she 
returned,  letting  herself  in  with  her  latchkey  and  putting  her 
head  in  at  the  door  to  explain  that  there  was  something  she 
had  forgotten.  Also,  her  face  declared,  there  was  something 
she  had  not  expected.  Clearly  she  had  not  believed  she  would 
see  Allan  sitting  there  quietly  over  his  book,  had  expected  to 
find  him  upstairs  changing  his  collar  or  already,  perhaps,  out 
of  the  house  altogether.  Quite  obviously  she  hadn't  believed 
him  when  he  said,  "I'm  not  going  out  to-night." 

Allan  wanted  to  laugh — had  much  ado  to  keep  the  corners 
of  his  mouth  from  twisting  upwards  while  Roberta  stood  in 
the  doorway  looking  in  upon  him.  But  he  was  very  sure 
that  Roberta  didn't  laugh.  She'd  be  too  chagrined  for  that. 
Besides,  Roberta  saw  the  thing  that  was  funny,  never  the 
thing  that  was  humorous. 

When  the  door  closed  upon  her  for  the  second  time  he  bent 
himself  to  absorption  in  his  book.  Ten  o'clock  came,  and  pres- 
ently a  knock  at  the  door.  Allan  opened  it  and  Guen  came  in 
with  reproaches  that  he  had  not  turned  up  that  evening  at  the 
Attic.  "I  specially  wanted  to  see  you,"  she  said. 

"Anything  up?"  he  inquired.  What  could  possibly  have 
necessitated  a  special  visit  at  this  hour  of  the  night?  So 
unlike  Guen,  this  sort  of  thing.  He  followed  her  into  the 
little  dining-room  and  shut  the  door. 

"Nothing's  up,"  she  said,  "only  I  had  to  come  and  tell  you. 
.  .  .  We  were  wrong  about  that  affair  of  Jan's  being  our  secret. 
It  isn't.  Not  only  that — it  never  was." 

"You  mean — mother  knew?" 

"All  the  time." 

There  was  a  little  silence,  out  of  which  Allan  spoke  presently 
with  the  air  of  one  continuing  a  conversation  begun  dim 
centuries  ago. 

"How  do  you  suppose  she  found  out?"  he  asked. 

"That  woman  at  St.  Julian's.  .  .  .  She  didn't  hold  her 
tongue.  ...  I  don't  know  why  we  ever  supposed  she  would. 
And  then  that  afternoon  I  went  to  see  Mrs.  Hill  there  was 
another  letter.  I  don't  know  why  mother  opened  it  ...  but 
she  did." 


INTRUSION  283 

"So  she  knew  .  .  .  when  you  got  back?" 

Guen  nodded.  "And  the  next  day  she  went  to  Parson's 
Green  herself.  There's  been  a  baby." 

"Jan's?    Mother  knew  that,  too?"  ' 

"There  isn't  anything  she  doesn't  know.  While  we  were 
kidding  ourselves  she  didn't  even  suspect,  she's  been  doing 
things.  You  see,  the  husband  found  out  .  .  .  came  across 
some  luggage  label  or  other.  He  wasn't  generous  .  .  .  demanded 
his  pound  of  flesh.  Mother  seems  to  have  arranged  things. 
Her  own  people  do  something  for  her,  and  I  gather  that  mother 
and  father  do  the  rest." 

"The  old  man,  too!     How  did  he  take  it?" 

"Quite  sensibly.  .  .  .  You  see,  there  wasn't  any  scandal." 

"That  must  have  helped  a  lot." 

"It  did."  Guen  performed  her  funny  little  trick  of  raised 
eyebrows  and  shoulders. 

"And  what  about  Pen  and  Caryl?     Do  they  know?" 

"Not  Caryl.  Mother's  idea,  that.  She  has  a  host  of  good 
reasons  why  Caryl  shouldn't  know  yet.  Pen,  I  understand,  is 
doing  the  romantic  stunt  about  it.  Besides,  Pen  never  believes 
more  than  she  wants  to  believe  about  anything." 

That,  Guen  knew,  was  Pen's  way  of  protecting  herself.  She 
had  made  of  it  an  effective  shield.  So  many  people  had  that 
amiable  trick  it  was  strange  that  Guen,  with  all  her  cleverness, 
could  not  achieve  it.  Though  she  drew  the  curtain  she  always 
knew  what  was  happening  on  the  other  side  of  it. 

"Come  and  see  me  on  Thursday  week,"  she  said.  "I've 
so  much  to  say,  and  there's  no  time  now.  I  promised  to  meet 
Tony  for  the  eleven-twenty-five  at  Charing  Cross.  ...  If  it's 
Madeleine  you're  trying  to  dodge  you  needn't  worry.  She  goes 
out  of  town  to-morrow  for  a  week  or  two." 

A  strange  empty  feeling  assailed  Allan.  "I'll  come  along 
with  you,"  he  said,  and  together  they  went  off  down  the  high- 
road and  on  to  the  tube  that  went  to  Charing  Cross.  It  was 
striking  twelve  when  Allan  let  himself  into  the  house.  Roberta 
met  him  in  the  hall,  with  a  smile  of  satisfaction  on  her  lips. 

"So  you  went  out,  after  all,"  she  said. 

"I've  been  up  to  Charing  Cross  with  Guen,"  he  explained. 
"I  didn't  go  up  to  the  Attic.  She  wanted  my  advice  and  came 
along  here  to  see  me." 

"I  see,"  said  Roberta.    But  she  continued  to  smile. 


CHAPTER    SIX 

1 

ALLAN  turned  up  on  the  Thursday  week,  and  before 
anybody  else  arrived  he  and  Guen  sat  and  talked  it 
out 

"I  want  to  bury  my  diminished  head,"  she  said,  "because 
I  minded  that  visit  to  Parson's  Green  so  much  and  because 
mother  didn't  mind — in  that  way — at  all.  Because  the  .  .  . 
nastiness  ...  of  it  didn't  paralyse  her  as  it  paralysed  me." 

"Us!"  said  Allan. 

"Oh,  if  you  like.  But  it  doesn't  make  it  any  better.  Besides, 
it  was  I  who  insisted  that  it  would  kill  mother  to  know.  I 
really  thought  it  would.  It's  our  colossal  arrogance  that  crushes 
me  .  .  .  the  impudent  futile  assumptions  of  youth.  I  thought 
there  were  things  in  life  mother  simply  couldn't  bear — and 
it  was  I  who  couldn't  bear  them,  who'd  have  given  all  I  pos- 
sessed to  have  escaped  that  visit  to  Parson's  Green.  And  I 
went  and  said  all  the  wrong  things.  .  .  .  Mother  went  and  said 
all  the  right  ones.  .«.  .  She  did  something.  She  went  out  alone 
and  filled  in  the  gaps.  I  didn't  even  seem  to  know  there  were 
any.  I  went  to  get  rid  of  evidence,  mother  to  collect  it.  And 
she  was  right  and  I  was  wrong.  How  do  you  account  for  it, 
Allan?" 

Allan  didn't,  but  he  said  vaguely  that  it  wasn't,  perhaps, 
a  problem  for  youth  to  have  tackled. 

"But  surely  this  was  our  subject.  We  pride  ourselves  on 
our  broad  outlook,  our  common-sense  view  of  sex.  We  can't 
get  out  of  it  that  way.  It's  borne  in  upon  me,  Allan,  that 
mother  and  her  generation  have  something  that  ours  hasn't, 
don't  mean  that  any  one  of  our  generation  would  have  failed  as 
badly  as  we — as  I — did.  We  overdid  our  belief  in  our  hard- 
ness. Not  expecting  to  be  hurt  at  all  we  were  laid  out  com- 
pletely at  the  first  twinge.  Let's  hope  that's  peculiar  to 

284 


INTRUSION  285 

ourselves  .  .  .  that  Madeleine,  for  example,  would  have  escaped 
that." 

"She  would,"  said  Allan  out  of  his  deep  conviction  that 
Madeleine  knew  how  to  deal  with  her  own  wounds. 

"I  think  so,  too,"  said  Guen.  "Madeleine's  like  mother. 
She  knows  that  it  isn't  the  growing  of  a  pachyderm  (our  favour- 
ite remedy)  that  protects  us,  but  only  that  deep  quiet  of  the 
spirit  that  she — and  mother — has  and  we  have  not.  That's 
why  they  can  look  at  facts  without  being  utterly  crushed,  with- 
out wanting  to  be  sick.  Mother  believes,  deep  down,  in  the 
ultimate  goodness  of  life — in  its  worth- whileness — as  Caryl 
does,  and  we  don't,  Allan.  She  can  take  the  long  view  and  we 
can't." 

"You  mean  our  rebellions  and  our  angers  render  us  myopic?" 

"Yes  ...  we  see  nothing  save  that  everything  is  wrong  and 
that  we  can't  put  it  right.  Mother  sees  that,  too,  and  is  content 
to  make  it  ever  so  little  less  wrong.  She  believes  that  it  is 
worth  doing,  and  we  don't.  We  believe  in  nothing,  Allan,  save 
our  own  futility." 

"And  that,"  said  Allan,  "has  us  eternally  gagged  and  bound." 

"That  explains,  doesn't  it,"  said  Guen,  "why  all  our  lives 
we've  hesitated  on  the  threshold  of  things — of  our  unpopular 
societies,  for  instance.  We'd  go  to  their  meetings  because  they 
said  the  sort  of  things  we  think  right.  We  gave  to  their,  funds 
for  the  same  reason,  though  we  never  really  identified  ourselves 
with  them.  We're  essentially  the  sort  of  people,  Allan,  who 
never  'join'  things,  not  out  of  fear  of  their  unpopularity,  but 
of  their  futility — and  ours.  There  isn't  any  plan  of  action 
we  believe  in  deeply  enough  .  .  .  and  as  mongers  of  words  we 
get  tired  of  them  and  hunger  for  deeds.  We're  destructive,  not 
constructive.  We  only  see  that  what  gets  in  the  way  of  the 
juggernaut  gets  crushed.  For  us  nothing  rises  from  the  ashes 
of  sacrifice.  We  do  not  believe  John  Brown's  spirit  goes  march- 
ing on.  Either  there  is  no  spirit  to  march  or  it,  too,  lies  moulder- 
ing in  John  Brown's  grave.  Isn't  that  how  you  feel?" 

Allan  nodded.  "And  yet,"  he  said,  "I  do  know  that  if  there 
is  anything  more  blasphemous  than  a  too-easy  optimism  it's  a 
too-easy  pessimism.  Our  generation's  in  the  dock  to  one  or 
other  of  the  charges.  Half  of  us  are  guilty  of  the  one:  and 
half  of  the  other." 


286  INTRUSION 

"And  between  the  two,"  said  Guen,  "we  cancel  each  other 
out." 

She  got  up  and  made  tea,  kneeling  to  do  it  before  a  gas  ring 
that  stood  beside  a  wide  hearth,  so  that  her  brown-clad  back 
was  towards  Allan. 

"Allan,  I'm  so  sick  of  myself,"  she  said,  "I  simply  can't  stand 
things  .  .  .  and  Tony's  as  bad.  We're  no  good,  we  scribblers. 
This  morning  I  asked  him  to  go  over  to  see  some  out-of-work 
the  News  has  been  featuring.  .  .  .  You  know  the  sort  of  thing 
.  .  .  complete  with  photograph  of  self  and  wife,  with 
progeny.  .  .  .  Oh,  they  gave  his  address,  of  course — nothing's, 
left  to  the  out-of-works,  not  even  their  privacy.  Well  .  .  . 
Tony  wouldn't.  He  said  he'd  send  on  my  cheque  and  add 
to  it:  but  there  was  an  Unemployment  Committee  who  had 
their  'investigators.' " 

"A.G.'s  very  busy,"  said  Allan  uneasily. 

"Oh  yes  ...  I  know.  But  that  wasn't  the  reason.  .  .  ." 
She  swung  round  from  tea-pot  and  kettle.  "Allan,  he  didn't 
want  to  go.  ...  He  couldn't  bear  to  go — any  more  than  I  could, 
Tony's  like  us,  Allan  .  .  .  and  I  hadn't  thought  ,it  of  him, 
He,  too,  can't  bear  to  look  at  life  .  .  .  can't  bear  to  think  about 
it.  He,  too,  sits  in  a  quiet  corner  and  writes  about  it.  .  .  .'* 

Again  Allan  made  that  uneasy  movement  in  his  chair. 

"Did  you  give  him  your  cheque?"  he  asked. 

"No  ...  I  sent  it  along  to  the  Committee,  through  the 
post.  .  .  .  Oh,  I  know  it  wouldn't  have  done  any  good  if  I 
had  gone,  but  I  despise  myself  because  I  couldn't.  I  remem- 
ber how  I  despised  Mrs.  Hill  .  .  .  not  because  she'd  had  that 
affair  with  Jan,  but  because  she  lacked  courage  and  honesty. 
As  though  that  isn't  what's  the  matter  with  the  lot  of  us!" 

"But  at  least  we  know  it." 

"Not  always.  ...  At  least  we  won't  admit  it.  This  morn- 
ing I  made  excuses  for  asking  Tony  to  go  down  to  Islington  for 
me.  ...  I  was  too  busy.  ...  It  was  only  when  he  pleaded  the 
same  excuse  and  got  irritable  that  I  admitted  the  truth.  ...  It 
wasn't  'busyness*  at  all — with  him  or  with  me! — but  funk — • 
sheer  funk.  Do  you  remember  that  girl  in  Galsworthy's 
Fraternity?" 

Allan  didn't,  particularly. 

"Oh,  surely,"  said  Guen.  "Thyme,  wasn't  her  silly  name? 
She  tried  slumming  and  went  with  her  young  man  into  a  wood 


INTRUSION  287 

and  wept  because  she  couldn't  stand  it.  And  her  young  man, 
mighty  scornful,  took  her  home  again  and  was  beautifuly  rude 
to  her  father  and  mother.  .  .  .  My  God,  it's  never  occurred 
to  me  before,  Allan,  but  I'm  like  that  girl.  I  simply  can't 
'stand'  things.  .  .  ." 

"But  you  don't  weep  and  no  young  man  has  taken  you  home 
and  been  rude  to  your  parents,  beautifully  or  otherwise." 

"I'm  exactly  like  Thyme,  all  the  same.  And  I  think  I  hate 
myself  as  much  as  I  hope  she  did.  God  knows.  .  .  .  Only, 
somehow,  my  failure's  worse  than  Thyme's.  It  isn't  only  that 
/  lack  courage  and  purpose,  but  that  I  supposed  other  people 
lacked  them  too.  At  least  Thyme  never  made  that  mistake 
about  her  young  man.  Mine,  in  this  particular  instance,  wasn't 
only  failure,  but  impudent  failure  as  well." 

She  got  up  and  with  a  twisted  smile  began  to  pour  out  tea. 

"There  really  isn't  anything  you  can  say  for  me  .  .  .  for 
'us'  if  you  like." 

There  was  a  long  silence  in  which  Guen  poured  out  more 
tea  and  sat  staring  out  through  the  long  open  window  over  the 
London  roofs.  It  was  after  six  o'clock  and  the  day  seemed  to 
be  standing  still,  poised  for  one  tiny  interval  upon  the  edge  of 
evening.  There  was  a  glow  already  in  the  sky,  stretching 
down  from  the  west  to  the  east,  like  a  slowly-spoken  blessing. 
There  were  times  when  the  peace  of  Nature  came  cruelly 
mocking  the  disruption  of  the  universe  man  had  created.  One 
hated  Nature  for  her  very  indifference — because  she  didn't 
care.  And  envied  her,  too,  because  she  could  be  like  that  and 
remain  beautiful,  desirable.  .  .  . 


Later  they  talked  of  Roberta.  .  .  . 

Still  later,  when  they  had  shaken  hands  in  their  undemon- 
strative fashion  and  Allan  had  gone,  Guen  went  out  on  to  the 
balcony.  The  colour  in  the  sky  had  spread  into  a  rich  deep 
harmony  towards  which  the  London  roofs  reached  up  like 
hungry  suppliants.  The  buzz  of  itinerant  humanity  floated 
up  to  her.  People  were  going  home  from  their  labours:  out 
to  their  suburbs  ...  to  wives  and  children.  It  was  as  though 
they  were  filing  out  from  a  beleaguered  city,  escaping.  .  .  . 

She  would  not  "escape"  for  three  hours  yet.   .  .  .  Three 


5288  INTRUSION 

hours  yet,  for  her  of  "shop" — of  book-talk  that  wasn't  life 
and  wasn't  like  life.  .  .  .  That,  perhaps,  was  just  as  well: 
life  had  a  trick  of  being  overwhelming.  It  had  been  that  this 
afternoon.  She  had  the  sensation,  now,  of  drawing  back  her 
skirts,  of  letting  the  stream  flow  on  without  her.  She  was 
tired. 

The  door  opened  and  A.G.  came  in. 

"Allan  gone?"  he  asked. 

Guen  came  in  from  the  verandah  and  stood  watching  him 
as  he  tipped  out  the  fruit  he  had  brought  in  with  him  into 
a  large  blue  bowl  that  had  a  big  chip  out  of  its  edge. 

"Tony,"  she  said,  "it's  nice  to  be  married  to  you." 

A.G.  looked  up,  pipe  in  mouth. 

"I  gathered  you  felt  that  way  about  it,"  he  said.  "I  return 
the  compliment.  Why  this  sudden  declaration,  O  Thou 
Undemonstrative  One?" 

"Because  it's  so  wonderful  that  I  should  be  ...  so  wonder- 
ful we  should  have  found  each  other.  .  .  .  You  see,  we're  the 
only  people  in  the  world  who  know  the  truth  about  sex." 

"You  seem,"  said  Tony,  "to  have  been  having  a  delightful 
conversation  with  that  brother  of  yours.  The  world's  getting 
better,  Guen.  .  .  .  You  have  got  to  believe  that.  .  .  .  Even 
over  this  sex  business." 

Guen  came  over  to  her  husband  and  put  her  arm  through 
his. 

"Don't  believe  it,"  she  said.  "When  I  was  seventeen  a 
man  in  London  Wall  stopped  me  and  asked  me  to  lunch  with 
him.  A  man  in  Holborn  this  afternoon  suggested  tea." 

"I  feel  sure  you  dealt  with  the  situation  quite  ably,"  Tony 
said.  "Have  an  apple?" 

Guen  shook  her  head,  relinquished  Tony's  arm  and  moved 
over  to  the  window,  beyond  which  the  sky  hung  now  like  a 
blue-grey  awning. 

"You  tired?"  A.G.  enquired. 

"Rather,"  she  said,  "but  it  isn't  that.  .  .  ." 

"What  then?" 

"I  only  want  to  escape  ...  to  get  away  from  things." 

He  smiled,  recognising  her  mood.  He  knew  that,  for  the 
moment,  the  world  had  sunk  to  the  level  of  the  bus  and  tube 
announcements:  "Please  do  not  spit."  "Mind  your  pockets." 
Humanity,  reduced  to  the  lowest  common  denominator.  .  ..  , 


INTRUSION  289 

"I'm  not  very  brave,  Tony.  ...  I  can't  escape  from  myself 
I  know:  but  I  do  want  to  get  away  from  things.  I  want  to 
hide." 

"Behind  Green  Hedges?" 

She  nodded. 

Wasn't  it  what  they  all  wanted — all  those  people  down  below 
hurrying  away  from  London  as  from  a  doomed  city,  all  pour- 
ing out  in  everlasting  procession  towards  their  own  particular 
place  of  forget  fulness  ?  Green  Hedges!  Behind  which  you 
might  shut  yourself  up  from  things.  .  .  .  Where  you  might  draw 
the  curtains  and  shoot  home  the  bolt.  Where  you  might  stop 
thinking  and  catch  at  serenity  and  strength.  .  .  . 

Green  Hedges  and  Tony.  Life  gave  you  that  and  life  was 
good  because  of  it.  She  was  silent,  turning  the  good  thought 
over. 

"By  the  way,"  said  Tony  suddenly,  "I  found  time  after 
all  to-day  to  run  over  and  see  that  out-of-work  chap  at 
Islington.  .  .  ." 

Guen  swung  round,  hot  colour  in  her  cheeks. 

"You  -went?  Oh,  Tony,  and  I  thought  you  funked  it, 
too.  .  .  ." 

"You  were  right.     I  did." 

"What  happened?" 

"When  I  got  there?  Nothing  sensational.  I  only  saw  the 
wife.  .  .  .  The  man's  found  temporary  work.  I  left  my 
address  and  told  her  to  get  into  communication  with  me  when 
it  gave  out.  It  was  all  I  could  do.  ...  They'll  get  the  benefit 
of  your  cheque,  if  you've  sent  it  on  to  the  Committee." 

"Another  patch!  Oh,  Tony,  I  wish  we  were  Christian 
Scientists.  It  must  be  so  comforting  to  know  that  poverty 
is  only  a  delusion  of  the  mind  and  that  hunger  can  be  cured 
by  thought!" 

She  turned  away  again  and  stood  staring  out  across  the 
London  roofs,  and  A.G.  stealing  a  glance  at  her  went  on 
polishing  his  apples.  He  knew  that  look  on  her  face,  had 
grown  used  to  seeing  it  during  those  difficult  days  of  the  war 
when,  beneath  that  quiet  exterior,  she  was  breaking  her  heart 
over  things.  You  couldn't  help  her.  She  suffered  as  do  all 
imaginative  people  who  have  moods  of  passionate  distaste  for 
things  as  they  are.  But  with  Guen,  as  Tony  knew,  it  was 
more,  too,  than  that.  He  was  aware  that  she  was  despising 


INTRUSION 

herself  because  she  knew  that  though  she  suffered  now,  to- 
morrow she  would  be  writing  all  the  better  because  of  it. 

He  went  over  and  slipped  an  arm  round  her. 

"Seeing  life  as  the  one  irrevocable  disaster.  No  damn 
good  in  anything,  eh?" 

She  pressed  herself  against  the  pillar  of  his  arm  and  let  the 
bitter  tide  of  her  self-contempt  drift  out  upon  the  calm  sanity 
of  their  common  affection. 

"There's  you  and  Green  Hedges,"  she  said,  "for  anchorage." 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 


THE  story  of  Jan's  illicit  love-affair  hardened  in  Pen  a 
determination  not  have  "any  more  nonsense  of  that 
sort"  in  the  family,  and  a  determination  to  give  Caryl 
a  "good  talking  to"  when  the  occasion  offered. 

It  offered  very  nicely,  as  it  happened,  on  the  Monday  follow- 
ing the  return  from  Cornwall  on  the  Saturday.  Anne  Suffield 
was  out  and  at  four  o'clock  Caryl  put  her  books  away  and 
came  down  to  the  drawing-room  for  tea.  She  had  not  seen 
Dick  since  her  return,  and  she  seemed  amused  when  Pen, 
pouring  out  tea  in  her  careful  fashion,  asked  in  a  manner 
heavily  casual  if  she  had  heard  much  from  him  whilst  she  had 
been  in  Cornwall. 

"Letters  you  mean?"  Caryl  asked  staring  unconcernedly 
over  the  rim  of  her  cup.  "No,  he  didn't  write  much.  Neither 
did  I.  We  don't,  you  know.  We  haven't  any  flair  for  words. 
It  was  for  us  Providence  invented  the  picture  post  card." 

"And  he  didn't  come  down,  after  all." 

"That  was  father's  fault.     He  kept  him  busy." 

"Not  only  father,"  said  Pen. 

Caryl  poured  herself  out  another  cup  of  tea  and  stared  at 
her  sister. 

"Oh,  come  off  it,  Pen,"  she  said,  "and  spit  it  out." 

Pen  "spat  it  out."  She  said,  "Are  you  aware  that  Dick  is 
in  the  habit  of  dropping  in  to  Berta's  for  tea?" 

"Not  in  the  habit,"  said  Caryl.  Her  face  was  untroubled. 
"He  goes  to  Berta's  sometimes,  if  that's  what  you  mean." 

"It  isn't,"  said  Pen,  and  proceeded  to  explain  that  one 
afternoon  when  she  had  been  at  Number  Sixteen  Dick  had 
appeared  with  his  sidecar  at  the  garden  gate,  very  much  as 
though  he  were  used  to  arriving  in  that  casual  fashion:  that, 
seeing  Pen,  he  had  made  some  excuse  for  his  visit  and  for 
not  staying:  that  several  days  later  Pen,  again  in  Roberta's 

291 


292  INTRUSION 

neighbourhood  to  see  a  woman  who  proved  to  be  not  at  home, 
was  seized  with  a  bad  head  and  had  called  in  at  Roberta's  for 
a  rest  before  walking  back.  It  wasn't  true  to  say  she  had 
gone  there  to  "spy":  she  really  hadn't  been  well.  And  Dick 
was  in  Roberta's  drawing-room,  his  cycle  at  the  kitchen 
door.  .  .  . 

The  faintest  of  shadows  passed  over  Caryl's  face,  indicative 
of  the  reminiscential  cloud  which  crossed  her  mind. 

"Well?"  she  said.  "Why  not?  There's  no  secret  about 
it:  Dick's  certain  to  tell  me  all  about  it  when  I  see  him  this 
evening." 

"Of  course,  since  he  was  discovered." 

"Don't  use  stupid  words.     There  was  no  discovery." 

"You  mean  you  .  .  .  allow  this?" 

"Of  course  I  allow  it.  Why  shouldn't  Dick  have  tea  occa- 
sionally with  Roberta?  You're  too  desparately  old-fashioned 
for  words." 

"If  you  are  bent  upon  being  a  fool.  .  .  ." 

"I'm  bent  on  being  the  exact  opposite,  if  possible.  It's  no 
good,  old  girl.  I  hate  your  world  of  possessive  affection. 
Always  shall.  I  believe  in  the  liberty  of  the  individual." 

"It  sounds  all  right  .  .  .  but  it  never  does.  .  .  ." 

Caryl  smiled. 

"That's  just  where  women  like  you  make  a  mistake.  .  .  . 
They  won't  understand  that  a  man  may  be  in  love  with  one 
woman  and  yet  be  aware  that  there  are  others  in  the  world 
worth  talking  to  ...  other  women  that  he  likes!" 

"A  man  who's  engaged  or  married  hasn't  any  right  to  notice 
other  women — much  less  like  them  enough  to  go  and  have  tea 
with  them." 

Again  Caryl  laughed. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "go  away,  go  away.     You're  impossible!" 

So  Pen  went  away,  and,  as  Caryl  had  supposed,  that  evening 
when  Dick  came  in  he  told  her  all  about  things  at  once — 
mentioned  those  two  visits  of  his  to  Meldon  Avenue  in  his 
charmingly  casual  fashion  as  though  they  didn't  matter,  as 
of  course  they  didn't.  He'd  been  at  a  loose  end  and  had  fallen 
back  on  Roberta.  "We  had  tea,  and  that  second  day  a  run 
round,"  he  said.  "I'm  afraid  Mrs.  Warren  disapproved  of 
us  and  that  she'd  be  awfully  glad  to  know  it  rained  and  spoilt 
Roberta's  new  hat." 


INTRUSION  293 

Caryl  exulted.  The  liberty  of  the  individual!  Of  course 
you  believed  in  it!  Pen  was  altogether  too  old-fashioned. 
Really,  you  couldn't  be  bothered.  .  .  .  You  couldn't — even 
if  you  wanted  to! — chain  a  man  up  quite  like  that.  Besides, 
they  never  stayed  chained:  they  only  pretended  and  then  you 
had  lies  and  deceit  and  make-believe,  than  which  there  couldn't, 
possibly,  be  anything  worse.  .  .  . 

But  the  next  time  Pen  saw  Roberta  with  Dick  they  didn't 
see  her.  He  was  taking  Roberta  in  the  sidecar  up  towards  the 
Heath  and  they  were  going  much  too  fast  to  see  anybody.  .  .  . 
The  evening  before  there  had  been  dancing  at  Adelaide  Lodge 
and  Roberta  and  Dick  had  danced  as  usual,  in  Pen's  opinion, 
too  much  together.  And  Dick  the  next  day  was  going  to 
Liverpool  for  a  couple  of  days  by  some  train  in  the  afternoon. 
Caryl  did  not  ask  for  particulars  because  she  never  went  to 
see  him  off,  considering  that  a  silly  habit  in  a  girl  engaged  to  a 
man  who  was  constantly  going  away.  Going  and  coming, 
breaking  in  upon  you  unexpectedly,  disturbing  your  work. 
Caryl  liked  it  much  better  that  way. 

On  this  particular  occasion,  however,  Dick  must  have  altered 
his  mind  about  the  train,  because  Pen  was  quite  positive  that 
it  was  Dick  she  saw,  soon  after  three,  riding  furiously  like 
that  up  towards  the  Heath.  Vaguely  Caryl  was  a  little  hurt. 
He  might,  since  he  was  free,  have  given  her  this  afternoon, 
even  though  she  had  impressed  upon  him  that  she  was  going 
to  "swot."  Such  a  fine  afternoon,  too.  It  was  horribly  difficult 
not  to  mind  just  a  little.  .  .  . 

But  to  Pen  she  showed  a  different  front. 

"Well  ...  I  told  him  I  was  too  busy  to  see  him  off  ... 
though  for  once  he  did  ask  me  .  .  .  and,  anyway,  I  shall  hear 
all  about  it  when  he  comes  back,"  she  said. 

But  she  didn't.  Dick  came  back  on  Wednesday  and  said 
nothing.  Evidently  he  had  forgotten.  Caryl,  gently  provoca- 
tive, jogged  his  memory. 

"Have  you  seen  Roberta  lately?"  she  enquired,  mischief  in 
voice  and  look. 

Dick  turned  quickly  and  stared  at  her. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  .  .  .  not  for  weeks,  surely,"  he  said. 

That  was  how  much  he  remembered  his  outings  with  Roberta. 
Oh,  but  he  couldn't  have  forgotten  something  that  happened 
only  three  days  ago.  ,  .  . 


294  INTRUSION 

"Darling  ...  it  doesn't  matter.  .  .  .  Please  don't  think 
I  mind  or  felt  hurt  .  .  .  but  didn't  you  see  her  on  Saturday 
afternoon — the  day  you  went  up  to  Liverpool?" 

"I  did  not!"  said  Dick.  He  had  the  surprised  look  of  the 
man  who  has  been  tripped  up,  caught  out,  but  Caryl  didn't 
see. 

"Then  Pen  must  have  been  mistaken,"  she  said  easily.  She 
wasn't  disturbed.  She  was  quite  certain  that  that  was  how 
it  had  happened  .  .  .  that  Pen  had  made  a  mistake. 

She  said  so  later  to  Pen  herself,  who  stared  at  her. 

"Rubbish,  my  dear  child,"  she  said.  "Why,  Roberta  her- 
self has  admitted  it!" 

And  again  Caryl's  world  rocked. 

She  grew  afraid.  She  was  like  a  man  living  in  a  haunted 
house — afraid  to  go  upstairs  for  fear  of  what  he  might  see. 
She  moved  about  in  a  twilight  of  apprehension,  holding  aloft 
her  candle  of  common-sense  and  self-control.  This  thing 
would  pass  if  only  you  pretended  it  wasn't  there  .  .  .  you 
daren't  believe  anything  else.  And  she  pretended,  all  the 
time  and  all  the  time,  that  there  was  nothing  there.  .  .  . 


She  did  not  refer  again  to  the  incident.     Somehow  Dick's 
lie  had  shut  it  down  into  a  pit  it  made  you  giddy  to  look 
down.   ...   It  ought,  that  lie    ("I  did  not!" — so  emphatic 
not  just  plain  "No"),  to  have  killed  her  love  for  Dick,  bu 
it  hadn't.     Deep  down  she  knew  it  was  not  the  lie  that  hur 
half  so  much  as  this  heart-breaking  knowledge  that  Dick  hac 
chosen  to  spend  an  afternoon  with  Roberta  when  he  migh 
have  spent  it  with  Caryl  herself.     He  had  preferred  Roberta 
It  wasn't  that  he  had  gone  half  so  much  as  that  he  wanted 
had  elected,  to  go.     That,  surely,  was  what  Pen  missed  when 
she  counselled  an  "ultimatum."    She  did  not  see  that  if  Dick 
wanted  to  go  to  Roberta  there  must  be  something  drawing  him 
all  the  time.  .  .  . 

But  Caryl  saw  it.  There  were  times  when  she  never  saw 
anything  else.  She  was  desperately  aware  that  Dick  was  con- 
stantly in  Roberta's  company,  but  she  said  nothing.  Outwardly 
her  relationship  with  Dick  had  not  altered:  nobody  guessed; 


INTRUSION  295 

but  beneath  that  quiet  air  of  the  usual  there  turned  and 
twisted  and  agonised  some  dreadful  thing  that  caught  her 
at  times  by  the  throat,  stifling  her.  She  went  still  to  the  little 
house  in  Meldon  Avenue,  but  with  a  difference.  Even  in  her 
silent  withdrawal,  her  hurt  pride  and  love,  there  was  something 
which  sent  her  constantly  to  Roberta.  And  from  Roberta  she 
learnt  nothing.  She  seldom  mentioned  Dick,  and  if  she  did 
it  was  in  such  a  casual  way  that  it  told  you  nothing  or  told 
you,  perhaps,  too  much.  Her  talk  was  all  of  Tommy  Carew 
and  the  people  she  was  meeting  at  her  flat.  Impossible  to 
credit  her  with  a  secret  passion  for  Dick.  It  must  be  Dick 
himself  who  was  just  "making  a  fool  of  himself."  Looking 
at  Roberta,  you  couldn't  believe  she  was  "encouraging"  him, 
yet,  for  all  that,  it  came  to  Caryl  one  day  that  she  was  going 
to  Meldon  Avenue  so  frequently  because  she  simply  couldn't 
bear  to  let  Roberta  out  of  her  sight.  ...  In  a  passion  of  dis- 
gust she  stopped  going  there  altogether. 

But  she  could  not  stop  Roberta's  occasional  appearances  at 
Adelaide  Lodge  to  tea:  nor  Roberta's  reproaches  that  she 
never  came  now  to  Meldon  Avenue.  And  when  she  stayed 
to  dinner  and  Dick  turned  up  it  was  unbearable,  because  you 
couldn't  possibly  watch  Dick  sitting  there  in  the  same  room 
with  Roberta  without  seeing  how  things  were.  Dick,  with  his 
moods  of  silence,  his  blatant  rudeness  to  Roberta,  and 
Roberta's  quiet,  inscrutable  smiling.  .  .  .  He  was  like  a  man 
struggling  in  the  grip  of  something  which  he  loathed  but 
which  he  could  not  shake  off.  And  once  after  dinner  she  came 
upon  them  in  the  garden,  saw  Dick  turn  suddenly,  take  her  in 
his  arms  and  kiss  her  in  a  way  that  turned  Caryl  sick.  She 
sat  there  in  the  garden  long  after  Dick  and  Roberta  had  gone 
in :  dull  misery  in  her  heart,  her  face  white  and  drawn  beneath 
the  evening  sky.  When  Dick  came  presently  to  look  for  her 
she  did  not  make  a  scene.  Some  little  bit  of  her  had  frozen: 
all  the  rest  palpitated  with  disgust  and  misery  and  a  frantic 
effort  to  understand.  It  was  horrible,  this  thing  that  was 
happening  to  her,  this  crumbling  of  her  passionate  happiness 
to  a  heap  of  dust  and  ashes  at  her  feet. 

"You'll  catch  cold,"  Dick  told  her,  sitting  down  at  her  side. 

"I  don't  care,"  she  said,  letting  her  hand  lie  motionless  in 
his. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  he  asked. 


296  INTRUSION 

"Nothing,"  she  said. 

"Why  don't  you  say,  outright,  that  you  saw  me  kissing 
Berta." 

Her  hand  moved  slightly  in  his. 

"Don't,"  she  said. 

"But  you  did  see?" 

Her  head  bent  lower. 

•"It  wasn't  the  first  time,"  he  said. 

"I  knew  that." 

All  about  them  the  night  came,  slow-footed.  A  new  moon, 
a  rim  of  silver,  was  rising  slowly  through  the  London  trees. 
Caryl  raised  her  head  and  sat  with  wide  eyes  staring  at  misery. 

"Caryl,  I  swear  to  you  I  don't  want  to  kiss  herl" 

"I  know  that,  too,"  she  said. 

She  turned  her  face  to  him,  and  the  look  in  her  eyes  robbed 
him  of  excuses.  He  made  a  gesture  of  despair. 

"It's  you  I  care  for  ...  not  Roberta.  It's  just  a  damnable 
•kind  of  fascination.  ...  I  try  to  keep  away  from  her,  God 
knows!" 

There  was  a  humble  look  about  him,  very  strange  and  pain- 
ful to  behold,  as  if  he  were  beseeching  her  to  understand.  .  .  . 
And  she  didn't.  She  didn't  understand  in  the  least.  "If  I 
•could,"  she  thought,  "perhaps  it  wouldn't  hurt  so  much." 
And  suddenly  she  took  his  hands,  bending  over  them  in  a 
passion  of  tears. 

"It's  something  in  me,"  she  said,  "something  I  don't  give 
you.  ...  If  I  gave  you  all  you  wanted,  you  wouldn't  find 
things  in  Roberta." 

"I  don't  find  things  in  Roberta,"  he  said.  "Roberta  gives 
me  nothing.  She  has  nothing  to  give." 

He  caught  her  up  against  him  and  began  kissing  her.  She 
did  not  resist,  but  she  sickened  with  the  thought  that  this,  half 
an  hour  ago,  was  how  he  had  kissed  Roberta. 

She  stole  in  presently  and  went  up  to  bed.  Roberta  had  not 
gone.  In  the  little  square  hall  she  sat  playing  cards  with 
•Caryl's  father,  and  as  Caryl  came  in,  said  good  night  and  went 
upstairs,  a  smile  nickered  for  an  instant  across  her  face. 

"Good  night,"  she  called  softly. 

•"Fifteen-two,"  said  Caryl's  father,  "fifteen-four  .  .  ." 

Cribbage.  .  .  . 

Dick  came  in  through  the  open  window.     His  voice  floated 


INTRUSION  297 

up  and  halted  her  there  upon  the  staircase:  "Well,  sir,  I  think 
I'll  say  good  night." 

And  Roberta's  slow,  insolent  drawl,  like  a  soft  paw  stroking 
their  faces:  "Aren't  you  going  to  see  me  home?" 

Dick's  voice  again:  "I'm  sorry.  .  .  .  I'm  afraid  I  can't 
manage  it." 

And  then  her  father's:  "It's  all  right,  my  boy,  I'll  see 
Berta  home.  .  .  .  You  get  along."  Dick  went,  and  Caryl 
moved  on  up  the  staircase. 


In  the  days  that  immediately  followed  nothing  happened  to 
reassure  Caryl.  If  anything,  it  was  the  other  way  about.  She 
grew  afraid  almost  to  meet  Dick,  afraid  of  what  he  would  tell 
her,  of  what  she  might  read  in  his  eyes.  His  moods  of  coolness 
towards  herself  alternated  with  those  of  passion,  and  both 
frightened  her,  for  always  it  was  as  if  he  was  trying  to  make 
up  for  something,  for  some  loss  that  had  come  to  her  through 
him,  some  loss  of  faith  and  trust,  some  thinning  out  of  life's 
joy.  Yet  in  a  way  she  never  doubted  his  love  for  her.  She 
believed  that  beneath  this  queer  attraction  Roberta  had  for 
him  he  loved  her,  Caryl,  not  best,  but  only.  This  feeling  he 
had  for  Roberta  would  pass.  It  must,  since  Roberta  was 
married  and  did  not  really  care.  She  didn't.  Caryl  was  sure 
of  that.  She  was  only  amusing  herself,  or  flattered  at  the 
power  Dick  allowed  her  to  see  she  possessed  over  him.  It 
would  soon  pass.  She  had  only  to  go  on  remembering  that: 
to  sit  tight  and  say  nothing.  .  .  .  Yet  it  was  difficult  to  sit 
still  at  the  death  of  her  old  ecstasies,  of  her  implicit  trust  and 
belief  in  her  lover. 

She  no  longer  trusted  him.  She  knew  that.  But  she  believed 
that  some  day  he  would  come  back  to  her — whole. 


CHAPTER   EIGHT 

1 

IT  was  at  the  beginning  of  September  that  Pen,  taking  her 
courage  in  both  hands,  spoke  to  Allan. 
A  visit  to  the  theatre  where  she  had  seen  Dick  with 
Roberta  was  the  last  straw  in  her  secret  fire  of  indignation. 

"Did  you  tell  Dick  we  saw  him  at  the  theatre?"  Pen  asked 
Caryl  when  she  returned  the  next  day  from  some  appointment 
she  had  with  Dick.  And  Caryl  said,  "I  didn't  think  of  it." 

This  conspiracy  of  lies!     It  roped  everybody  in! 

So  Pen  went  to  Allan,  who  raised  his  eyebrows  and  appeared 
unconcerned.  But  he  spoke  to  Roberta  none  the  less. 

"You  seem  to  go  out  a  good  deal  lately,"  he  said.  "I 
imagine  you  don't  go  alone." 

"Tommy's  back,"  said  Roberta. 

"I'm  aware  of  that,  but  it  wasn't  Tommy  you  were  at  the 
theatre  with  the  other  evening,  though  you  told  me  you  were 
going  with  her  when  I  passed  on  the  tickets." 

"She  was  engaged.  ...  I  rang  up  Dick  at  the  last 
moment.  .  .  ." 

"Well,  don't  ring  Dick  up:  or  don't  do  it  so  frequently. 
Pen  says  you  see  too  much  of  him." 

"But  Caryl  knows." 

"You  mean  you  tell  her  when  you  go  out  together?" 

"Well,  not  every  time,  perhaps.  .  .  ." 

"Now  look  here,  Roberta.  I  won't  have  it.  Don't  start  the 
old  game  with  Dick  you  played  with  Thorp.  It's  just  as  well 
to  remember  that  Dick's  engaged  to  Caryl.  I  won't  have  you 
making  her  unhappy.  It  isn't  as  if  you  cared  anything  about 
Dick." 

"How  do  you  know?"  asked  Roberta. 

"Because  I  know  you.  You've  never  cared  for  anybody  in 
your  life." 

298 


INTRUSION  299. 

"Well,  it  may  interest  you  to  know  that  I'm  very  fond  of 
Dick." 

"What,  precisely,  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"What  you  mean  when  you  say  you're  fond  of  Madeleine 
Hervey." 

"But  I  don't  say  it." 

"Well,  it's  true,  anyway.  Everybody  knows.  Look  here, 
Allan,  you  leave  me  alone  and  I'll  leave  you  alone." 

Allan  looked  at  her.  He  felt  very  calm,  very  quiet,  and  a 
sense  of  inward  satisfaction  came  to  him  as  he  acknowledged 
these  things. 

"Understand  me,  Roberta,"  he  said.  "I  won't  have  it! 
You'll  keep  Madeleine  Hervey's  name  off  your  lips  and  you'll 
leave  Dick  Merrick  alone." 

Roberta  laughed,  but  said  nothing.  Somehow,  Allan  was 
strangely  disconcerted  by  that  laugh.  A  tremor  passed  over 
the  surface  of  his  calm:  something  happened  to  that  sense  of 
inward  satisfaction. 

"You're  awfully  funny,  you  know,"  she  said,  "and  melo- 
dramatic. If  Dick  likes  to  take  me  out  sometimes,  why 
shouldn't  he?  It's  Caryl's  fault  if  he  does.  She  should  make 
herself  more  attractive.  She  doesn't  care  what  she  wears,  and 
she's  everlastingly  swotting  at  that  old  degree  of  hers.  As  if 
men  cared  for  brains.  .  .  .  Good  lord,  /  know  men!  Brains 
are  the  last  thing  they  want  from  a  woman.  Besides,  Caryl's 
always  putting  Dick  off  for  something  or  other." 

"Well,  don't  you  step  into  the  breach,  that's  all,"  said  Allan. 

Roberta  laughed  again.  Allan  looked  at  her  leaning  back 
against  the  table,  her  hands  flat  upon  its  surface,  her  head 
thrown  back,  her  perfect  teeth  revealed  in  the  laugh  that 
plunged  a  knife  into  the  heart  of  Allan's  calm.  She  was  like 
the  woman  in  that  poem  of  Rossetti's  who  had  been  stabbed 
by  her  lover  because  she  laughed  ...  as  Roberta  was  laughing 
now.  And  he  was  like  the  lover.  He  went  over  and  shook  her 
into  sobriety. 

"Shut  up,"  he  said.  "One  of  these  days  when  you  laugK 
like  that  I  shall  kill  you." 

He  hated  her  because  she  had  made  love  an  indelicacy  .  .  . 
because  she  thought  it  was  just  a  thing  for  rouged  lips  and  the 
comedian's  snigger.  It  was  the  only  sort  of  love  she  knew. 
And  he  hated  her  because  she  dragged  out  his  passion  for  her 


300  INTRUSION 

over  the  clean  surface  of  life;  so  that,  actually,  he  never  got 
away  from  it. 

But  though  he  had  "spoken"  to  Roberta  he  was  not  really 
concerned  with  her  friendship  for  Dick:  he  thought  Pen, 
there,  was  altogether  on  the  wrong  track.  Dick  did  not  strike 
him  as  the  sort  of  young  man  to  lose  his  head  over  Roberta, 
and  he  was  quite  certain  Roberta  was  only  amusing  herself  as 
she  did  with  every  man  she  met.  She  was  vain  and  stupid, 
but  not  vicious,  and,  in  any  case,  Allan  was  tired  of  following 
her  about.  It  was  up  to  the  man,  the  particular  man  of  the 
moment,  to  protect  himself.  Never  once  did  it  occur  to  him 
that  Roberta  might  be  using  Dick  as  she  had  hoped  to  use 
Madeleine  Hervey.  If  he  wouldn't,  then  she  would  .  .  .  that 
she  wanted  her  freedom  as  badly  as  all  that.  Tommy  Carew 
could  perhaps  have  told  him  why. 


Certainly  it  was  Madeleine's  name  on  Roberta's  lips  rather 
than  her  friendship  with  Dick  that  drove  hardest,  these  days, 
into  the  shell  of  Allan's  understanding.  He  was  utterly 
obsessed  by  the  idea  that  what  Roberta  wanted  was  that  he 
should  put  himself  in  the  wrong:  so  that  it  never  once  occurred 
to  him  that  she  might  perform  that  office  for  herself.  fHe 
reasoned,  too,  that  if  Roberta  saw  more  of  Dick  than  was  good 
for  him,  it  must  be  Caryl's  own  fault.  She  was  crazy  about 
this  idea  of  giving  a  man  his  freedom,  and  Allan  supposed  she 
knew  her  man.  Also,  Dick  was  one  of  the  very  few  men  he 
had  never  seen  Roberta  "make  eyes"  at;  they  did  not,  she 
and  Dick,  he  thought,  get  on  too  well.  Often,  as  he  knew, 
Caryl  had  had  to  keep  the  peace;  had  frequently  persuaded 
Roberta  to  go  somewhere  or  other  with  Dick  when  she  herself 
was  too  busy  to  go.  Allan  believed  Caryl  could  fight  her  own 
battles  and,  anyway,  was  not  just  now  particularly  disposed 
to  take  her  part.  He  was  irritated  by  her  recent  frank  criticism 
of  himself  in  the  role  of  husband.  She  had  been,  he  thought, 
infernally  and  unnecessarily  sorry  for  Roberta:  had  accused 
him  of  neglect  and  selfishness.  You  couldn't  talk  to  a  kid 
like  Caryl  about  things,  of  course;  but  "Pen's  on  the  wrong 
track,"  he  wrote  to  Guen.  "For  God's  sake,  shut  her  up!" 

What   disturbed  him,   however,   was  the   fact  that   where 


INTRUSION  301 

Madeleine  was  concerned  Roberta  was  very  definitely  not  on 
the  wrong  track — a  little  piece  of  self-knowledge  which  partly 
accounted  for  the  energy  with  which  he  had  shaken  Roberta 
when  she  laughed  an  evening  or  so  ago.  For  it  had  shown 
him,  that  ringing  laughter  of  hers,  not  only  the  hollowness  of 
what  he  had  attained,  but  the  desirability  of  what  he  had 
missed.  Following  a  will-o'-the-wisp  he  had  missed  the  thing 
that  mattered.  Yet  even  now  (and  this  he  recognised,  too) 
the  will-o'-the-wisp  ran  ahead  seductively.  He  wanted  not 
to  follow,  but  he  could  not  yet  turn  back.  Roberta  was 
infinitely  stupid.  The  tactics  she  followed  were  the  tactics  to 
keep  him  still  following  after  her — and  that  was  not  what  she 
wanted.  She  did  not  want  to  keep  him,  but  she  was  not  clever 
enough  to  see  that  the  satisfaction  of  his  passion  was  the  easiest 
way  of  killing  it.  Had  she  satisfied  him  she  would  have  lost 
him:  the  thing  that  held  him — that  defied  and  made  naught 
of  his  reading  of  the  rest  of  her — was  his  unsatisfied  physical 
longing.  Always — and  he  knew  it  and  she  did  not — it  was  the 
mantle  of  her  inaccessibility  clinging  about  his  feet  that 
hindered  his  escape. 

God  only  knew  if  she  was  satisfied  with  this  strange  shape 
into  which  she  had  twisted  marriage.  Allan  only  knew  that 
he  wasn't.  Did  she  really  want  no  more  out  of  it,  out  of  life, 
than  what  she  had  secured,  immunity  from  claims  of  body  and 
soul,  liberty  in  which  to  see  her  own  friends,  go  her  own  way? 
.  .  .  They  had  arrived,  these  days,  at  the  stage  when  they  just 
did  not  quarrel,  and  Allan  wished  with  passion  sometimes  that 
they  did.  He  was  appalled  by  the  sense  he  had  of  their  utter 
separateness.  It  was  awful  to  live  with  somebody  with  whom 
you've  not  a  single  thing  in  common  .  .  .  who  doesn't  care, 
in  any  way  at  all,  what  you  are  or  do  or  feel.  Roberta  didn't 
pretend  any  longer.  She  just  didn't  care. 

Allan  had  been  through  hours  of  misery  because  he  still  did, 
and  of  agony  because  he  had  thought,  sometimes,  that  it  was 
going  on  for  ever.  But  he  knew  now  that  it  wasn't.  He  knew 
it  because  Madeleine  Hervey  was  back  in  town  again,  and  he 
was  afraid  to  go  to  the  Attic  in  case  he  should  meet  her. 


302  INTRUSION 


At  the  beginning  of  September  it  was  obvious  even  to  Allan, 
who  had  much  else  to  think  about,  that  Dick  was  seeing  a  good 
deal  less  of  Roberta  than  he  had  been  doing  during  the  summer. 
Caryl  had  it  from  Dick  himself,  who  persisted  in  telling  her 
when  Roberta  had  "turned  him  down,"  and  from  Roberta 
herself  on  one  of  those  occasions  when  she  came  to  Adelaide 
Lodge  to  dinner.  Finding  Caryl  alone  in  the  drawing-room, 
she  had  plunged  headlong  into  her  subject. 

"Caryl  .  .  .  aren't  you  ever  coming  to  see  me  again?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Caryl  uneasily.    "Not  just  yet." 

"Why  not?" 

"I'd  rather  not  say." 

How  explain  that  she  was  still  kept  away  by  that  sense  of 
disgust  which  had  swept  over  her  in  the  summer  when  she 
realised  that  she  had  been  going  to  Meldon  Avenue  to  keep  an. 
eye  on  Roberta? 

"Caryl.  ...  It  isn't  my  fault — really — about  Dick.  I  don't 
want  him  hanging  around  .  .  .  not,  I  mean,  if  it's  upsetting 
you." 

Caryl  put  down  her  book  and  directed  a  level  stare  at 
Roberta. 

"It  isn't,"  she  said  quietly. 

"Well,  then,  if  it's  all  right,  why  don't  you  come  to  see 
me  ...  be  pally  again?  Look  here,  Caryl,  twice  last  week  I 
refused  to  go  out  with  Dick — sent  him  off  to  you." 

Caryl  winced.  Oh  yes,  Dick  had  come  to  her  right  enough: 
had  come  complaining  that  Berta  had  "turned  him  down." 

"Bobbie,  please  ...  I  really  can't  discuss  this  with  you." 
She  picked  up  her  book  again.  The  words  on  the  page  danced 
up  and  down  ...  up  and  down  .  .  .  and  when  at  last  they  stood 
still  they  had  lost  all  their  meaning.  Roberta's  honey-sweet 
voice  was  taking  the  sense  out  of  them  and  out  of  life.  .  .  . 

"Well,  I  know  it  can't  be  very  nice  for  you,"  she  was  saying. 
"But-  then,  it  isn't  for  me,  either.  .  .  .  Pen  glares  at  me  enough 
to  kill  me,  and  Allan's  been  at  me,  too.  Really,  Caryl,  it  isn't 
my  fault.  ...  I  haven't  encouraged  Dick." 

She  didn't  need  to,  Caryl  thought  a  little  bitterly. 

"I  didn't  suppose  you  had,"  she  said.  "Shall  we  drop  the 
subject?" 


INTRUSION  303 

"That's  all  very  well  .  .  .  but  I  can't  have  you  and  Dick 
quarrelling  over  me." 

Caryl's  level  brows  drew  together  in  sudden  pain. 

"We  don't  quarrel,"  she  said.     "Who  told  you  we  did?" 

"Nobody.  But  that  night  when  you  came  in  from  the  gar- 
den .  .  .  and  Dick  followed.  You  looked  as  though  you'd  been 
quarrelling  then." 

"We  hadn't,"  Caryl  said. 

"Nor  that  afternoon  ...  a  long  while  ago  now  .  .  .  when 
you  went  off  without  any  tea?" 

"Nor  that  day  either,"  said  Caryl. 

"Then  you  haven't  been  .  .  .  bothering?" 

"About  Dick's  making  himself  ridiculous  over  you?" 

"Yes  .  . '.  if  you  like  to  put  it  like  that." 

"Isn't  that  what  it  is?" 

"I  suppose  so.    All  men  are  like  that." 

"Over  you,  you  mean?" 

"I  tell  you,  Caryl,  men  are  rotters.  .  .  .  But  I'm  awfully 
glad  you  don't  mind  about  Dick  .  .  .  and  me." 

A  funny  little  smile  hovered  for  an  instant  over  Caryl's 
mouth.  She  sat  there,  her  fingers  twisted  in  her  lap,  and  she 
gave  presently  the  very  faintest  shrug  of  her  thin  shoulders. 

"Oh,  mind!"  she  said  just  as  Alice  came  in  with  the  tea 
tray. 


Tea  was  ever  a  meal  you  could  make  as  short  or  as  long  as 
you  pleased.  On  the  plea  of  work  Caryl  made  it  this  afternoon 
very  short  indeed.  But  from  dinner  there  would  be  no  escape. 
And  to  it  Dick  was  coming.  .  .  .  Perhaps  it  was  accidental 
that  Dick's  visits  to  dinner  synchronized  so  frequently  with 
Roberta's.  You  had  to  think  that.  Besides,  to-night  Allan 
was  coming,  too.  That  ought  to  make  it  better. 

But  it  didn't.  Perhaps  nobody  and  nothing  could  have  made 
it  better.  Or  worse.  From  first  to  last  it  was  simply  unbearable. 

And  yet  what  was  it  exactly?  What  was  there  about  the 
meal  which  would  have  opened  anybody's  eyes  without  the 
foreknowledge  that  was  Caryl's?  "I'm  looking  for  things," 
she  said,  "imagining  things.  .  .  ."  And  even  that  didn't  help 
.  .  .  nor  the  flood  of  self-disgust  which  swept  over  her. 

She  sat  this  evening,  for  some  reason,  opposite  Dick  instead 


304  INTRUSION 

of  beside  him.  The  dining-table  was  round,  and  Roberta  sat 
at  what  should  have  been  the  right-hand  corner,  so  that  she, 
too,  faced  Dick.  And  every  time  Caryl  raised  her  eyes  it  seemed 
as  if  they  went  straight  either  towards  Dick  or  Roberta.  Yet 
Dick  and  Roberta  were  not  talking:  they  addressed  scarcely 
any  remark  to  each  other.  Dick,  it  is  true,  kept  up  a  running 
fire  of  general  conversation;  but  to  Caryl  it  was  as  though 
the  talk  was  a  shield  between  him  and  Roberta.  His  eyes  were 
constantly  upon  her,  and  every  time  Caryl  noticed  it  was  like 
a  physical  pain,  sharp  and  savage,  as  of  a  sting.  When 
Roberta's  eyes  met  Dick's  he  looked  away  quickly — "as  if  he 
were  afraid,"  went  Caryl's  thoughts.  And  yet  Roberta  was 
behaving  perfectly:  just  sitting  there  quite  quietly  eating  her 
food,  exchanging  trivial  remarks  with  Pen  and  Anne  Suffield. 
Most  certainly  she  was  not  coquetting  with  Dick — making  eyes. 
Her  air  was  one  almost  of  indifference — as  if  she  didn't  care 
...  (as  if  she  needn't  trouble,  went  Caryl's  traitor  thoughts). 
She  had  the  unconcern  of  the  woman  who  is  sure  of  her  man, 
who  knows  she  needn't  even  raise  an  eyebrow.  Roberta  never 
gave  herself  any  unnecessary  trouble,  and  to  Caryl  this  evening 
that  little  air  of  quiet  about  her  was  deadly.  More,  it  was 
insolent — as  though  she  said,  "You  will  observe  I  don't  even 
have  to  change  my  frock  or  powder  my  nose.  ..." 

And  poor  Caryl  had  done  both — had  put  on  her  nicest  frock 
and  borrowed  some  of  Pen's  powder.  .  .  . 

Over  coffee  the  talk  turned  for  an  instant  upon  a  story  of 
Guen's  in  the  current  Miscellany.  Even  John  Suffield  was 
moved  to  express  admiration  of  the  way  it  was  done.  As  a 
story  it  disturbed  him,  but  less  than  it  would  have  disturbed 
him  a  few  months  ago.  "You  know,"  he  said  now  to  Allan, 
"I  don't  see  how  we  can  afford  this  new  world  you  and  Guen 
are  after." 

"But  do  you  think,"  Allan  asked  him,  "that  we  can  really 
afford  the  old  one — this  world  we've  got?" 

It  was  then  that  Roberta  looked  up  from  a  contemplative 
stirring  of  her  coffee. 

"I  wish  someone'd  tell  me,"  she  said,  "what  really  happened 
at  the  end  of  Guen's  story." 

"Read  it  for  yourself,"  said  Allan  bluntly. 

"But  I  have,"  said  Roberta.  "Honestly  .  .  .  I've  read  the 
ending  twice  and  I  don't  understand  it  a  scrap." 


INTRUSION  305 

So  they  told  her,  and  Roberta  said  prettily,  "Thanks  .  .  . 
it  must  be  awfully  nice  to  have  brains.  .  .  ." 

Allan  frowned,  but  Caryl  didn't  see  that.  She  only  saw 
Dick's  smile  and  that  look  which  passed  between  her  father 
and  Pen's  Tom.  Her  nerves,  already  stretched  and  strained, 
snapped  suddenly. 

"I  don't  see,"  she  said,  "why  men  always  wear  that  look 
of  gratification  when  a  woman  confesses  she's  a  fool." 

And  Caryl  rose  and  walked  out  into  the  garden. 


Nobody  followed  her.  She  walked  to  the  bottom  of  the 
garden  and  sat  down  beneath  September's  yellow  moon. 

"I  can't  bear  it  ...  I  just  can't!"  she  said,  her  hands 
clasped  in  an  agony  of  misery  and  her  head  bowed  over  them. 

Yet  presently — within  that  high-walled  garden  fragrant  with 
the  scent  of  late  roses  and  of  early  asters,  where  already  sum- 
mer seemed  folded  like  a  memory  against  earth's  heart,  where 
no  wind  or  living  thing  stirred — her  misery  stole  out  from  her 
as  the  sea  from  a  moon-kissed  shore.  A  world  unseen, 
unguessed  at,  drew  near  and  blessed  her.  It  ceased  to  matter 
so  dreadfully  what  happened  to  her.  There  were  things  that 
remained — things  that  nobody  could  touch.  Out  of  the  deli- 
cate dark  a  laughing  face  came  swimming  .  .  .  and  Jan's  voice 
.  .  .  "Oh,  you!  You'd  think  it  a  privilege  to  break  a  front 
tooth!" 

Jan  had  understood — had  known  she  was  like  that,  perhaps 
because  he  was  like  it  himself  as  well.  He,  too,  loved  living, 
loved  life  that  had  served  him  so  scurvily.  That  phrase  of  his 
would  go  down  with  her  to  the  grave.  .  .  . 

She  was  young  and  she  wanted  to  live.  No  one  ever  wanted 
it  as  she  wanted  it.  She  wanted  to  live,  whatever  the  years 
had  to  offer  her. 

"I  want  to  stay,"  she  said,  "until  I'm  burned  out." 

Nothing  mattered — nothing  in  all  the  world  save  the  fate 
that  had  overtaken  Jan — to  die  before  you  were  old,  before  you 
had  lived,  actually,  at  all.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER   NINE 

1 

NOT  that  the  miseries — the  vague  blur  of  unhappiness — > 
did  not  come  back.  But  at  least  that  little  bit  of 
knowledge,  that  hidden  pool  of  impregnable  quiet, 
helped  her  to  keep  her  secret.  Nobody  guessed  but  Pen,  and 
Pen  only  guessed  enough  for  vague  disapproval:  even  she  did 
not  believe  there  was  "anything  in  it — really,"  only  even  the 
most  harmless  of  philandering  was  not  the  sort  of  quality  any 
sensible  woman  encouraged  in  the  man  she  was  going  to  marry. 
But  Caryl  wasn't  sensible.  Caryl  was  an  idea-d  little  idiot, 
full  of  theories  that  wouldn't  work,  that  in  this  world  never 
would  work.  .  .  .  All  the  same,  Pen  saw — she  could  not  help 
seeing — that  Caryl  no  longer  went  to  Meldon  Avenue.  Others 
saw  it  too:  but  found  in  Caryl's  studies  for  her  Final  reason 
enough.  Only  Pen  (clever  at  nothing  but  the  reading  of  men 
and  women)  saw  down  beneath  the  veneer  of  that  affability 
Caryl  showed  towards  Roberta  whenever  she  came  to  Adelaide 
Lodge;  read  aright  the  signs  of  Caryl's  distress  when  Dick  and 
Roberta  were  both  at  the  house,  and  made  no  mistake  over  that 
evening  when  Caryl  rapped  out  her  snub  and  walked  out  into 
the  garden.  She  saw  that  Caryl,  for  all  her  talk,  was  less  brave 
than  her  ideas.  She  suffered,  but  she  suffered  in  silence.  You 
couldn't,  try  as  you  might,  get  anything  out  of  Caryl.  She 
went  to  her  lectures  and  returned  from  them;  her  mind  centred, 
to  all  outward  seeming,  upon  the  thesis  with  which  she  hoped 
in  the  next  year  to  take  her  M.A.  Her  Honours  degree  in 
Pure  Mathematics  had  been  an  achievement,  and  Anne  Suf- 
field  thought  she  had  overdone  it.  "Poor  child!"  she  said  that 
night  when  Caryl  had  snubbed  Roberta,  "so  unlike  Caryl. 
I'm  sure  she's  working  too  hard!" 

But  it  wasn't  her  M.A.  thesis  which  was  wearing  her  out 
half  so  much  as  this  problem  of  Roberta  and  Dick,  from  which 
she  could  never  escape  and  the  answer  to  which  eluded  her. 

306 


INTRUSION  307 

Withdrawn,  aloof,  she  looked  at  it  steadily:  approached  it  by 
different  methods  and  still  arrived  at  no  solution.  Roberta's 
part  in  it  baffled  her  utterly.  The  things  she  knew  of  Roberta 
and  still  more  the  things  she  didn't  know,  the  things  she  was 
quite  hopelessly  wrong  about,  did  not  tend  in  the  least  to 
simplify  the  problem.  At  the  most,  she  felt,  Roberta  was  only 
amusing  herself,  finding  Dick  useful,  filling  up  the  gaps.  .  .  . 
Yet  if  you  admitted  that  you  had  also  to  admit  something 
else:  you  had  to  admit  that  Roberta  would  undoubtedly  be 
worried  by  this  passion  of  feeling  she'd  inadvertently  called  into 
being,  not  only  because  of  Caryl  (and  Caryl  thought  she  would 
care  something  for  that),  but  because  Roberta  had  told  her  so 
often  how  it  distressed  her  when  men  lost  their  heads  about 
her.  (They  did  it  frequently:  "If  I  were  a  man,"  Caryl  used 
to  think,  "I'd  do  it,  too!")  You  had,  no  doubt  at  all  about 
it,  Caryl  reasoned,  to  acquit  Roberta  of  malice  prepense:  she 
was  vain  and  fond  of  flattery — even  Caryl,  not  at  all  good  at 
psychology,  saw  that — and  she  always  let  a  situation  get  beyond 
her  in  a  fashion  that  argued  stupidity.  All  those  cases  of  all 
those  other  men.  Roberta  had  never  known  in  time  what  was 
happening:  had  always  "let  herself  in"  for  things.  She  hadn't 
known — she  never  would  know — what  to  do  with  passion,  with 
this  thing  of  the  depths  her  beauty  plucked  out  of  men! 
She'd  find  it  always  a  thing  of  vast  inconvenience,  but  it 
wouldn't  be  Roberta  who  would  be  scorched.  She'd  merely 
withdraw  herself  from  the  flame,  delicately  revolted,  more 
convinced  than  ever  of  her  own  essential  delicacy  and  the 
incurable,  never-ending  beastliness  of  the  world  she  lived  in. 

Any  fleeting  doubt  that  might  have  come  to  Caryl  as  to 
Roberta's  indifference  was  disposed  of  not  only  by  Roberta's 
own  disclaimers  ("It's  not  my  fault.  ...  I  don't  want  him 
hanging  about.  .  .  .  Really,  Caryl,  I  haven't  encouraged 
him!"),  but  by  Allan's  attitude  when  Pen  had  finished 'with 
him.  Pen  had  said  outrageous  things  to  Allan,  and  he  had 
remained  calm.  That,  somehow,  did  seem  to  settle  it,  because 
you  couldn't  help  feeling  Allan  knew.  He  had  seen  the  lighting 
of  all  those  other  candles  and  their  extinguishing.  Always  the 
altar  had  remained  beautiful,  bare  of  sacrifice.  Oh,  yes,  Allan 
knew:  he  was  used  to  men  making  fools  of  themselves  over 
Roberta. 

Yet,  though  Roberta  was  thus  far  absolved,  Caryl  could  not 


308  INTRUSION 

find  it  in  her  heart  to  go  to  see  her.  That  avalanche  of  disgust 
which  had  swept  down  upon  her  when  she  realised  she'd  been 
going  to  Meldon  Avenue  merely  to  "keep  an  eye"  on  Roberta 
was  still  making  that  impossible.  But  it  was  not  Roberta's 
part  in  this  contretemps  that  really  worried  her.  It  wasn't 
Roberta  she  blamed  if,  indeed,  she  blamed  anybody — and  per- 
haps she  didn't.  Nor  was  it  really  Roberta's  fate  which  inter- 
ested her,  for  even  Caryl  sensed  vaguely  that  Roberta's  capacity 
for  suffering  was  not  overwhelming.  Just  that  delicate  with- 
drawal, that  folding  of  herself  away  .  .  .  little  more.  The 
person  who  would  suffer — was  suffering — was  Dick  (she 
omitted  herself  because  her  suffering  was  so  utterly  bound  up 
with  his),  and,  whatever  Roberta  was  doing,  Dick  was  certainly 
not  "amusing"  himself.  This  feeling  he  had  for  Roberta  was 
horribly  real,  and  Caryl  was  far  from  despising  it  because  she 
knew  it  for  so  utterly  a  thing  of  the  senses.  She  saw  that, 
indeed,  as  the  one  piece  of  brightness  in  her  dark  cloud,  for 
she  did  not  believe  that  a  thing  so  entirely  physical  could 
possibly  last.  She  believed — and  her  faith  was  the  rock  to 
which  she  clung  in  a  raging  sea — that  presently  Dick's  intel- 
lectual disapproval  would  turn  and  stamp  upon  it :  that  all  she 
had  to  do  was  to  sit  still,  to  pretend  that  she  saw  less  than  she 
did,  that  she  suffered  less.  .  .  . 

Only  that,  with  Dick,  was  a  thing  horribly  difficult  to  keep 
up.  Easier  with  anybody  than  with  Dick  .  .  .  who  only  made 
her  realise  how  impossible  it  was  to  wear  a  mask  before  one 
for  whom  all  masks  had  for  so  long  been  doffed.  There  were 
dreadful  occasions  during  those  early  September  days  when  she 
didn't  "keep  it  up"  at  all,  when  she  stopped  being  aware  of 
Dick's  pain,  perceiving  only  her  own.  That  was  the  unforgiv- 
able sin — to  show  what  you  were  enduring.  As  though,  here, 
you  mattered.  .  .  . 

It  happened  once  when  Dick  came  complaining  that  Roberta 
had  "turned  him  down" — she  did  it  often  these  days.  .  . 
("Sending  him  back  to  you,"  Roberta  had  called  it,  hadn't  she, 
to  Caryl?)  And  suddenly  the  armour  in  which  Caryl  had  come 
clad  to  the  interview  slipped  from  her.  The  sword  ran  home. 

"Oh,  why,  why  do  you  tell  me?"  she  said.  It  was  some- 
how outrageous  that  he  should:  that  his  own  sense  of  dignity 
didn't  prevent  it.  And  it  didn't. 

"I  must,"  Dick  said;  "it's  a  sort  of  penance.  .  .  ." 


INTRUSION  309 

"But  it's  7,  /,  who  do  the  penance,"  groaned  Caryl,  forgetting 
that  she  had  said  once,  "I  must  know  .  .  .  whatever  happens, 
I  must  know!" 

She  saw  now  that  he  didn't  understand,  that  he  thought  she 
was  hurt  because  Roberta  had  had  to  remind  him  that  he  was 
engaged  to  Caryl,  had  "sent  him  back"  to  her.  And  it  wasn't 
that;  at  least,  it  wasn't  that  which  had  stripped  her  of  her 
armour,  but  only  this  outrageous  sense  of  pity  which  assailed 
her  because  he  hadn't  been  able  to  keep  from  her  this  last 
revelation  of  his  weakness.  It  was  as  though,  hideously,  he 
took  some  morbid  delight  in  baring  his  wounds.  .  .  .  They 
turned  her  sick. 

In  between  these  miserable  days  came  others  which  were 
not  .  .  .  days  in  which  they  believed  they  had  forgotten  and 
were  happy.  It  was  always  Dick  who  knocked  this  precarious 
happiness  over  the  head.  Caryl  would  have  forgotten  if  he 
would  have  allowed  her. 

"It's  you  who  ought  to  do  the  turning  down,"  he  told  her 
one  day.  "Why  don't  you  chuck  me,  Caryl?" 

She  answered  with  averted  face. 

"I  don't  know  .  .  .  unless  it's  that  I  happen  to  care  enough 
to  go  on." 

"For  how  long?" 

"God  knows!"  she  said,  and  seas  of  bitterness  flowed  over 
her.  "Would  it  be  any  satisfaction  to  you  to  know  that  you 
could  break  my  heart?  Is  that  what  you  want?" 

"Caryl,  don't.  .  .  ." 

His  look  of  misery  did  not  stop  her.  The  knife  was  in  her 
heart  and  turning  all  ways.  She  raised  her  chin  and  spoke  with 
the  calm  of  the  dying:  "You  can't.  You  can't  break  my  heart. 
Nobody  can.  .  .  .  You  can't,  any  of  you,  touch  the  real  me.  .  .  . 
It  wouldn't  kill  me  to  know  you  faithless  .  .  .  more  faithless 
than  you  are.  .  .  .  No,  don't  touch  me  ...  I  can't  bear  it!" 
Her  voice  rose:  the  calm  of  the  dying  incontinently  deserted 
her. 

"You  .  .  .  you  make  me  angry,"  she  said.  "I  could  die  of 
shame  for  you.  To  grovel  like  this  .  .  .  before  any  girl  .  .  . 
to  come  to  me  ...  whining  about  it  ...  don't  touch  me,  I  tell 
you — I  despise  you!" 

It  was  a  scene  difficult  to  forget,  hateful  to  remember.  And 
Caryl  remembered  it  all  night,  and  went  off  next  morning  to 


310  INTRUSION 

a  lecture  on  Elliptic  Functions,  of  which  she  didn't  hear  a 
word.  This  frightened  her,  and  she  decided  that  there  must 
be  no  more  "scenes." 

But  there  were.  She  was  powerless,  it  seemed,  to  prevent 
them.  There  was  that  day,  scarcely  a  week  later,  when  she 
and  Dick  had  gone  down  to  Kew.  ...  A  miserable  day  it 
proved,  forlorn  and  empty  of  hope.  She  was  sore  from  a  week 
of  petty  disloyalties,  of  shifting  and  lies.  Dick  had  hardly  been 
near  her  for  the  length  of  it,  though  he  swore  he  hadn't  been 
with  Roberta.  She  didn't  believe  him,  or  perhaps  she  wouldn't. 
Was  it  better  to  believe  that  he'd  been  with  Roberta  than  that 
he  hadn't  wanted  to  come  to  her?  She  had  to  hold  on  to  her 
belief  in  his  love  for  her,  to  her  conviction  that  this  feeling 
for  Roberta  was  no  more  than  the  wind  across  the  grass.  She 
sat  now  straightly  in  her  seat,  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  river,  where 
a  streak  of  light  ran  swiftly  up  stream,  betraying  the  path  of  a 
water  rat  to  the  opposite  bank. 

"If  only,"  she  said  suddenly  out  of  a  desperate  silence,  "if 
only  Roberta  weren't  married!" 

"What  difference  would  that  make?"  Dick  wanted  to  know. 

She  looked  at  him.    Her  eyes  did  not  waver,  nor  her  voice. 

"You  might  be  able  to  go  and  get  it  over!" 

It  was  a  phrase  some  girl  in  Guen's  room  had  used  long  ago 
about  the  writers  in  some  advanced  quarterly,  who  had  given 
their  imagination  rein  down  a  disgusting  thoroughfare.  The 
girl  had  sounded  amused,  but  Caryl's  voice  repeating  her  phrase 
this  afternoon  to  Dick  had  been  resonant  with  passionate 
disgust. 

"Oh,  I  can't  talk  about  it!"  she  said.  "But  anything  would 
be  better  than  this  .  .  .  anything  in  the  world." 

Her  voice  broke.  She  sat  quite  still,  unspeakably  wretched, 
staring  down  at  her  hands,  her  level  brows  drawn  together. 

It  was  a  beautiful  afternoon,  clad  in  soft  lights  and  shades, 
in  primrose  and  pearl  and  grey.  Dick  and  she  were  sitting  on 
a  seat  on  the  very  edge  of  the  Gardens,  in  a  quiet  spot  by  the 
river  where  it  swung  past  the  curve  of  the  grounds.  Nothing 
and  nobody  was  there  to  disturb  them  save  the  quiet  beauty 
of  the  day  that  mocked  their  own  lack  of  tranquillity.  Suddenly 
Dick  moved  up  to  her  and  took  her  unresisting  hands  in  his. 

"You  blessed  infant,"  he  said,  "you  don't  know  what  you're 
talking  about." 


INTRUSION  311 

The  quick  tears  came  into  her  eyes. 

"I  do,"  she  said.     "I  know  a  lot  more  than  you  think." 

"You  mean,  you'd  marry  me  .  .  .  afterwards?" 

The  tears  in  her  eyes  welled  over  and  flowed  down  her  face. 
She  made  a  pitiful  effort  to  control  them,  gave  it  up,  struggled 
to  free  her  hands,  gave  that  up,  too,  and  turned  her  head  away. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "I  don't  know."  The  tears  rolled 
down  and  down  her  face.  "If  anyone  should  see  us!"  Dick 
thought;  and  then,  "Oh,  damn!  what  the  hell  does  it  matter?" 
She  looked,  he  thought,  such  a  baby.  Torn  with  pity,  he  was 
torn  also  with  anger  against  her  because  she  let  him  see  how 
much  he  was  making  her  suffer,  against  himself  because  he 
could  neither  give  her  up  nor  keep  away  from  Roberta.  All 
that  was  best  in  him  wanted  Caryl:  but  some  little  bit  of  him 
(much  stronger,  somehow,  than  all  the  rest)  wanted  Roberta. 

"Darling,"  he  said,  "don't  cry.     I'm  not  worth  it." 

He  knew  he  wasn't,  and  yet  it  pleased  him  to  hear  himself 
say  so.  And  Caryl,  as  if  she  knew  that,  went  on  with  her  crying. 
He  would  have  drawn  her  to  him,  but  she  resisted.  That  hurt. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  "you  can't  any  longer  bear  me  to  touch 
you." 

She  conquered  her  nerves  with  an  effort,  let  him  put  an 
arm  round  her. 

"It  isn't  what  you  do  that  hurts,"  she  said  presently.  "It's 
what  you  want  to  do.  .  .  ." 

"But  I  don't  want.  .  .  .  Good  God,  I  tell  you  I  don't  care 
tuppence  for  Roberta!  The  only  person  I  care  about  is  you. 
It  always  was  you  .  .  .  even  when  you  were  doing  your  best  to 
make  it  Marjorie." 

She  said,  presently,  "Yes,  but  it  isn't  all  me.  If  you  cared 
as  I  do  there  wouldn't  be  room  for  anybody  else." 

"There  isn't.    Berta's  an  intruder  ...  an  interloper." 

"I  know,  but  you  can't  turn  her  out." 

"Not  yet." 

Silence  after  that  and  the  mist  coming  up  and  Caryl's  white 
face  rising  palely  out  of  it.  "Not  yet.  .  .  ."  How  long,  oh 
Lord,  how  long? 

With  unintentional  humour  came  the  cry  of  the  keepers, 
calling  time.  They  rose  and  walked  on  towards  one  of  the 
Kew  Road  gates.  They  went  out  silently,  and  all  the  time  the 
sword  twisted  in  Caryl's  heart. 


312  INTRUSION 

Faithfulness! — not  only  physical,  but  mental  and  moral. 
That  was  what  she  wanted,  and  she  wasn't  going  to  get  it. 
But  how  many  women  did?  "You're  very  young,  you  know," 
a  girl  at  King's  had  said  to  her  once,  "if  you  don't  know  that 
faithfulness  is  the  one  thing  a  woman  never  gets  from  a  man. 
There  are  women  who  think  they  do  ...  who  like  to  think  it. 
I'm  not  such  a  fool.  I  merely  face  facts." 

So  Caryl  "faced  facts"  all  the  way  home  on  the  top  of  the 
Highgate  bus,  and  profoundly  miserable  the  proceeding  made 
her. 


If  only  they  could  have  got  away  from  Roberta  and  not  have 
talked  so  much  about  her!  If  only  she  hadn't  been  there, 
everlastingly,  as  a  shadowy  third,  they  could  even  then  have 
snatched  some  semblance  of  happiness  from  their  hours  together. 
But  she  always  was,  and,  strangely  enough,  it  was  Dick's  fault 
and  not  Caryl's  that  they  so  seldom  escaped  her.  Even  now 
there  were  days  when  Caryl  could  have  cheated  herself  into 
believing  that  the  incidents  which  disturbed  her  were  trivial 
and  did  not  matter,  if  Dick  had  not  persisted  in  his  dreary 
penance  until  she  wanted  to  shriek.  Only  by  erecting  the  wall 
of  her  reserve  could  she  at  all  these  days  avoid  "scenes." 
Instinctively  she  guarded  her  soul,  that  pool  of  impregnable 
quiet,  against  intrusion.  Love  wasn't  all:  she  still  believed 
it,  and  yet  it  didn't  help  her.  .  .  .  Gradually  her  unhappiness 
ceased  to  be  a  vague  blur  and  became  a  hideous  definiteness 
that  was  like  a  steel  trap  cutting  the  deeper  into  her  the  more 
she  struggled  to  escape.  She  could,  she  thought,  have  stood 
it  if  Roberta  had  held  him  by  any  other  thread  or  by  more 
than  that  one  of  physical  intoxication:  if  he  could  have  equipped 
his  passion  with  some  element  of  greatness:  if  it  hadn't  been 
possible  for  him  to  say,  "I  don't  care  tuppence  about  Roberta. 
...  I  despise  her!  The  feeling  I  have  for  her  is  like  the 
measles!"  Because  one  wasn't  a  nice  object  when  one  had 
the  measles  and  to  discuss  your  symptoms  was  disgusting. 

When  she  couldn't  shut  the  door  of  her  work  upon  her 
thoughts  she  found  they  had  a  way  of  besieging  her.  She  went 
over  things,  sorting,  explaining,  accusing,  until  her  head  reeled 
and  ached. 


INTRUSION  313 

"If  only  he  wouldn't  tell  me,"  she  said  to  herself,  "I'd  forget 
...  at  least,  I  shouldn't  remember  all  the  time.  If  only  he'd 
be  quiet  I  wouldn't  look.  .  .  ." 

And  she  couldn't  bear  to  look.  Her  instinct  was  to  turn  her 
head  away  as  she  had  wanted  to  do  when  she  saw  Mr.  Mase- 
field's  Nan.  That  love-scene  between  Dick  and  Nan  when  he 
takes  the  pins  out  of  her  hair  had  struck  her  with  crude  horror. 
She  couldn't  bear  to  look.  To  depict  on  the  stage  things  you'd 
instinctively  look  away  from  in  real  life  was  bad  art,  Guen  had 
said  afterwards.  "The  essence  of  a  love-scene  is  what  you 
leave  out."  And  being  Guen,  she  had  forborne  to  add:  "I 
told  you  you  wouldn't  be  able  to  bear  it." 

But  Dick  left  nothing  out:  spared  neither  himself  nor  her. 
And  Caryl,  all  the  time  holding  fast  to  her  one  conviction, 
reminded  herself  that  Roberta  didn't  matter.  That  she  didn't 
matter  and  never  would.  .  .  .  She  held  on  to  it  with  the  despera- 
tion of  the  woman  who  knows  that  when  that  is  gone  there  is 
simply  nothing  else.  Whatever  happened,  Roberta  didn't  mat- 
ter. Surely  there  ought  to  have  been  more  consolation  in  the 
thought  than  there  was.  Even  Dick  knew  it  was  true. 

"I  wouldn't  really  care,"  he  said,  "if  I  never  saw  her  again. 
Yet  she's  like  a  magnet:  as  long  as  I  know  she's  there — in  that 
little  messy  house"  (messier  than  ever  it  was,  these  days)  "I 
have  to  go.  And  seeing  her's  the  devil!  .  .  .  It's  so  ...  so 
futile  ...  we  haven't  anything  to  talk  about  and,  besides,  it 
annoys  her  .  .  .  my  turning  up  unexpectedly,  I  mean.  I  make 
myself  a  nuisance:  she  reminds  me  that  she  has  other  friends. 
...  It  isn't  a  dignified  figure  I  cut,  Caryl,  if  it's  any 
consolation  to  you  to  know  that." 

"It  isn't,"  said  Caryl.     Nothing  was. 

"And  there's  another  thing.  You  were  all  wrong  about  her 
being  unhappy.  That's  rot  ...  she's  merely  discontented. 
It  isn't  the  Revolutionary's  fault  they  don't  get  on.  ...  I'll 
say  that  for  him.  His  only  fault  is  that  he  hasn't  enough 
money.  Pots  of  money,  and  she'd  be  happy  anywhere,  with 
anybody.  Not  that  she'll  ever  know  what  happiness  is,  or 
unhappiness  .  .  .  she  exists  on  some  miserable  middle  plane. 
...  I  want  to  push  her  off  it  ...  violently,  so  that  it  hurts. 
But  you  can't  hurt  her.  She  has  the  supreme  gift  of  hurting 
other  people  while  remaining  untouched  herself.  .  .  .  She  doesn't 
care  for  me  ...  but  I  flatter  her  vanity  and  she  finds  me 


3H  INTRUSION 

useful.  .  .  .  That's  the  feeling  I  have  about  it  all  the  time  .  .  . 
that  she's  using  me.  God.  only  knows  why.  And  I  don't  care!" 

"You're  content  to  be  used?"  Caryl  asked,  trying  hard  to 
keep  that  high  note  of  scorn  out  of  her  voice  and  not  wholly 
succeeding. 

"No,  I'm  not.  I'm  not  content  about  anything.  ...  I  wish 
she'd  run  off  to  the  Antipodes  with  some  millionaire.  .  .  .  Good 
God,  Caryl!  Isn't  it  awful  that  we're  sitting  here  talking  like 
this?" 

Caryl  assented. 

"Yes,  it's  pretty  awful,"  she  said.  "We're  not  making  a 
howling  success  of  things.  ...  I  thought  an  engagement  was 
such  a  glorious  thing."  The  Mute  Impossible  Idealist  climbed 
up  and  looked  despairingly  out  of  her  dark  eyes.  "It  was,  Dick, 
ours,  wasn't  it,  until  .  .  ." 

"I  began  to  play  the  fool?  I  know  .  .  .  it's  all  my  fault. 
.  .  .  Why  don't  you  chuck  me,  Caryl,  and  have  done  with  it?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  and  then  suddenly  lost  courage. 

"Dick  ...  I  can't  go  on  like  this.  I  just  can't.  Something's 
got  to  happen.  .  .  ." 

"You  want  to  cut  things?" 

•"Wouldn't  it  be  best?" 

"Tor  you?" 

-"For  both  of  us." 

Her  voice  sounded  scornful.  It  wasn't  that  she  felt  scornful, 
fout  only  that  she  was  cold  and  frightened,  and  for  the  moment 
this  assumption  of  scorn  was  as  a  shield  between  them.  He 
came  closer,  slipped  an  arm  round  her  waist.  She  controlled 
her  shivering  with  a  mighty  effort,  but  beneath  his  arm  her 
young  body  was  suddenly  rigid  and  unyielding. 

"Mean  it?"  said  Dicks  voice  in  her  ear.  The  arm  round 
her  waist  tightened:  she  felt  his  lips  on  her  hair  and,  catching 
her  breath,  she  drew  away. 

"Don't !"  she  said,  disgust  elbowing  her  assumption  of  scorn. 
To  kiss  her  in  that  easy,  intimate  fashion,  as  though  things 
were  what  they  were!  He  left  her  nothing,  neither  her  old  joy, 
her  love  nor  her  dignity.  He'd  cheapened  the  whole  universe. 

"Mustn't  I?"  said  Dick.  "Do  you  hate  me  as  much  as  all 
that?" 

"I  don't  hate  you  .  .  .  only,  I  can't  bear  it." 

She  looked  woefully  stricken  and  pathetic.    Her  white  face 


INTRUSION  315 

was  averted,  and  she  struggled  to  unfasten  the  grip  of  his 
fingers  on  her  waist.  Misery  assailed  her,  for  something — 
something  vivid  and  unexpected,  like  a  flash  of  lightning — had 
lit  up  the  future,  and  there  on  the  dark  line  of  the  horizon  she 
saw  nothing  but  suffering.  And  her  sight  to-day  seemed 
preternaturally  long. 

"Dick,"  she  said,  "I  can't,  I  simply  can't  bear  it." 
He  stooped  his  mouth  to  hers,  and  kissed  her.  She  did  not 
resist  and  he  held  her  close,  as  though  he  would  squeeze  out 
of  her  all  the  misery  of  the  past  six  weeks,  all  the  unhappiness 
that  had  flowed  into  her  through  the  channel  of  her  love.  And 
she,  her  arms  about  his  neck,  her  mouth  to  his,  took  solace 
for  the  immediate  unbelievable  past  in  the  overpowering  ecstasy 
of  the  moment. 

It  was  quite  true,  it  couldn't  go  on.     Something  had  to 
happen.     Only — what  ? 


Then  something  did  happen — something  totally  unexpected. 

Caryl  was  due  to  spend  the  following  week-end  at  Herne. 
Bay  with  the  Hestons,  and  on  the  Thursday  evening  a  letter 
came  from  Marjorie  putting  her  off.  Caryl,  her  mind  else- 
where, slipped  the  letter  in  her  pocket  and  thought  no  more 
of  it,  until  Dick  came  two  hours  later  and  said  casually,  "By 
the  way,  you're  away,  aren't  you,  this  week-end?"  "Told 
anybody  about  it?"  he  asked  when  she  took  out  Marjorie's 
letter.  "No?  Then,  I  say,  Caryl,  don't." 

"Why  not?"  she  said,  realising  nothing  save  that  she  was 
infinitely  relieved  to  be  spared  the  scrutiny  of  Marjorie's  sharp 
eye,  the  scourge  of  her  merciless  tongue.  It  wouldn't  be  easy 
to  hide  things  from  Marjorie.  .  .  .  "Why  not?"  she  asked  again. 

"Because  I  want  you  to  come  and  spend  it  with  me,  and 
they'd  make  a  fuss  here,  wouldn't  they,  if  they  knew  .  .  ." 

"They  couldn't  object  to  a  boarding  house,"  Caryl  said, 
"it's  done  nowadays.  Even  mother  knows  that." 

"But  I  wasn't  thinking  of  a  boarding  house,"  Dick  said., 

Caryl  looked  at  him. 

"What  then?"  she  asked. 

There's  the  Cottage." 


3i  6  INTRUSION 

"But  Mrs.  Day's  not  there  now.  Father  paid  her  off  weeks 
ago.  .  .  .  The  place  is  empty." 

**That,  rather,  was  my  point." 

The  colour  flamed  in  Caryl's  face.     She  didn't  answer. 

"I  see,"  said  Dick  slowly.  "You're  afraid.  .  . .  You  no  longer 
trust  me.  .  .  .  Six  weeks  ago  you'd  have  trusted  me  on  a  desert 
island." 

"I  would  now,"  she  said.     "Of  course  I'll  come." 

"But  you  don't  want  to — much?" 

"More  than  anything  else,"  she  said.  "Oh,  Dick  .  .  .  more 
than  anything  else!" 

"And  you'll  trust  me  to  play  the  game?" 

"Myself,  too,"  she  said. 

So  Caryl,  with  the  air  of  a  conspirator,  told  nobody  of 
Marjorie's  letter.  It  would  be  easy  enough,  on  the  Friday 
evening,  to  slip  off  as  if  she  were  going  to  the  station.  They 
were  used  to  her  goings  and  comings:  nobody  would  want  to 
see  her  off.  She  was  not  particularly  in  love  with  the  role  of 
conspirator,  but  it  was  the  simplest  way  and  she  wanted  those 
two  days  so  desperately.  She  saw  this  sudden  surprising 
venture  as  her  one  hope  of  getting  things  back.  If  that  failed 
everything  was  over.  No  use  whatever  in  trying  again.  .  .  . 

So  she  and  Dick  went  off  for  their  chaperonless  week-end, 
and  from  it  Caryl  returned  on  the  Sunday  evening  with 
rapturous  face.  As  she  stood  before  her  glass,  beneath  the  eye 
of  the  Young  Person  Who  Means  To  Be  Happy,  the  door 
opened  and  Pen  came  in. 

"I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you,"  she  said  at  once,  "that  I 
happen  to  know  you  haven't  been  with  Marjorie.  I  met  her  in 
Heath  Street  yesterday.  She  had  to  come  home  unexpectedly 
and  had  written  putting  you  off." 

Caryl  looked  up,  brush  in  hand. 

"Quite  right,"  she  said.     "What  then?" 

"Nothing — except  that  it  would  be  interesting  to  know  where 
you  have  been." 

"With  Dick— at  the  Cottage." 

"You  little  fool!"  said  Pen. 

"I've  had  the  loveliest  time,  Pen  .  .  .  and  you  needn't  think 
beastly  things.  We  aren't  .  .  .  like  that." 

"You  aren't,  my  dear." 

"Neither  is  Dick.  .  .  .  Horrid  of  you,  Pen,  to  suggest  it." 


INTRUSION  317 

"I  don't  suggest  it  ...  but  I've  eyes  in  my  head.  I  can  see 
quite  well,  thank  you,  what  has  been  going  on." 

"Well,  it  isn't  going  on  any  longer." 

"You  mean — Dick's  given  Berta  up?" 

"If  you  must  put  it  like  that.  ...  It  never  meant  anything. 
It  was  just  silliness,  and  now  it's  over." 

"You're  sure  of  that?" 

"And  Dick.  We're  not  talking  of  Roberta  any  more.  She's 
dropped  out." 

"I  see,"  said  Pen.    "Well,  it  sounds  all  right." 

"It  is.  ...  I  say,  Pen,  don't  mention  this  week-end,  not  even 
to  Tom.  (Pen  always  narrated  the  day's  happenings  to  her 
husband  in  bed  at  night!)  And  I  especially  don't  want 
mother  to  know.  I  don't  think  she'd  understand  and  she 
might  be  hurt.  I  wouldn't  like  that." 

Pen  smiled.  Justifiably,  since  she  had  just  seen  her  mother 
off  to  an  expedition  into  Surrey  to  spend  the  day  with  the 
woman  who  had  been  Jan's  mistress. 

But  Caryl  was  beyond  her  smiling.  She  had  had  her  fine 
moment,  had  stood  looking  down  upon  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  it  had  revealed  to  her.  A  thing  so  fine,  so  exquisite, 
could  never  be  forgotten  or  destroyed.  It  would  go  with  you 
through  life  and  on  out  into  the  darkness  that  was  death. 


CHAPTER    TEN 


OTHERS  followed  it,  as  September,  coloured,  wistful  and 
reluctant  slipped  like  a  gold-brown  bead  off  the  string 
of  the  year.  October  arrived,  unbelievably  lovely — 
all  summer  crowded  into  its  early  days  of  blue  skies  and  hot 
sunshine. 

Dick  certainly  did  seem  to  have  "recovered"  from  Roberta. 
She  no  longer  hovered,  a  shadowy  third,  between  him  and 
Caryl,  who  stayed  in  her  busyness  over  her  thesis  to  luxuriate 
in  her  own  happiness  and  in  this  belated  summer  of  nineteen- 
twenty.  It  had  happened  as  she  had  always  known  it  must — 
even  down  there  in  her  pit  of  misery.  Roberta  had  grown 
tired:  was  no  longer  intrigued  by  Dick.  The  fires  of  her 
interest  had  begun  to  burn  low  before  ever  his  fan  of  flattery 
had  come  to  rest,  and  now  that  it  moved  no  more  the  flame 
was  altogether  extinguished.  When  you  met  her  she  seemed 
to  spare  no  pains  to  show  you  the  handful  of  ashes  scattered 
there  on  the  hearth.  .  .  . 

Not  that  the  meetings  were  frequent,  for  nobody  at  Adelaide 
Lodge  saw  much  of  Roberta  these  days.  As  far  as  Dick  was 
concerned  it  was  already  as  if  she  did  not  exist.  He  never 
spoke  of  her.  Only  for  Caryl  she  moved  still  in  a  delicate  mist 
of  beauty:  was  drawn  back  at  intervals  into  her  life  by  that 
remote,  unreal  longing  after  beauty  which  possessed  her,  and 
by  a  vague  gratitude  towards  Roberta  because  her  critically 
observant  eyes  had  sharpened  her  own.  Nowadays  Caryl  took 
longer  over  her  dress:  tried  experiments  in  colour  and  style 
and  regretted  that  she  hadn't  the  sort  of  skin  you  could  try 
experiments  with.  Had  she  possessed  it  she  would  have  taken 
to  face-creams  and  powders  with  the  alacrity  of  a  duck  to 
water.  This,  certainly,  was  a  condition  of  mind  that  needed 
study  and  yet  it  was,  she  found,  extraordinarily  simple.  The 
incident  with  Roberta  had  taught  her  that  Dick  cared 


INTRUSION  319 

enormously  what  a  woman  "looked  like":  that  beauty  appealed 
to  him  and  that  for  this  reason,  though  she  was  not  beautiful 
she  must  take  pains  to  appear  so.  She  must  achieve  an  effect. 
So  here,  in  the  warm  October  weather,  she  was  happy  in  the 
way  people  often  are  who  have  been  desperately  unhappy — 
as  though  they  had  snatched  something  out  of  the  fire  of  their 
chastening.  Something  in  Caryl  that  before  had  slept  was 
now  awake:  some  key  turned,  some  door  opened  that  would 
never  shut  again.  Her  love  for  Dick  had  shed,  perhaps,  some- 
thing of  its  wonder,  something  of  its  bloom,  but  it  had  taken 
on  some  quality  it  had  never  had  before.  If  it  asked  less 
it  understood  more  and  would  give  more — and  differently. 
Caryl  now  could  "put  up"  with  things.  And  more  than  that 
it  seemed  as  if  what  had  happened  had  been  necessary  to  pro- 
duce the  quiet  peace  that  dwelt  with  her  now.  She  under- 
stood, as  certainly  she  had  never  understood  before,  that  you 
absorbed  whatever  happened  to  you,  that  you  couldn't  sweep 
things  aside.  They  went  ultimately,  these  things  you  endured, 
to  produce  you.  Here,  perhaps,  was  the  explanation  of  the 
fact  that  Caryl  bore  Roberta  no  grudge  for  the  part  she  had 
played  in  these  things  which  had  happened  to  her.  They  had 
given  her  something  she  had  not  had  before,  something 
stabilising,  indestructible.  But  Roberta  at  this  stage  seemed 
in  little  need  of  the  friendship  Caryl  tried  to  renew.  Always 
unequal,  it  seemed  now  more  than  a  little  absurd  and  utterly 
superfluous.  Caryl  gathered  that  Roberta  had  very  many 
friends  of  her  own;  that  she  did  not  spend  much  time  nowa- 
days at  Number  Sixteen,  which  began  to  wear  a  faded  second- 
hand air.  Neither  did  Roberta  make  any  secret  of  the  fact 
that  she  and  Allan  were  not  happy  together.  The  fiction  that 
they  were  had  long  grown  too  grievous  a  burden  to  sustain. 
Roberta  no  longer  cared,  either  way.  Besides,  you  couldn't 
help  seeing  that  she  had  other  things  to  think  about.  .  .  . 

"I  wasn't  made  for  this  sort  of  life,"  she  would  say  to  Caryl. 
"This  house  and  the  beastly  work  gets  on  my  nerves.  Besides, 
Allan  and  I  bore  each  other  to  death.  I  don't  see  why  you 
should  look  so  shocked,  either.  I  don't  see  the  use  of 
pretending." 

Difficult  to  say  how  Caryl  arrived  at  the  knowledge  that 
Roberta  resented — more  bitterly  than  she  resented  anything 
else — Allan's  insistent  morality  that  would  not  give  her  the 


320  INTRUSION 

opportunity  of  escape.  Certainly  Roberta  never  put  these 
things  into  words,  for  her  prudishness,  like  her  beauty,  remained 
with  her  yet — lone  sentinels  of  her  castle  of  self.  There 
were  times  when  Caryl,  burrowing  into  that  secret  knowl- 
edge of  her  own,  was  more  than  a  little  sorry  for  Roberta — 
not  alone  because  she  was  missing  things,  but  because  she 
was  not  aware  she  was  missing  them.  Roberta  walked  uncharted 
through  life:  she  had  neither  plan  nor  direction. 

Or  had  she,  now,  for  the  first  time?  There  was  something 
about  her  to-day  that  didn't  seem  to  have  a  name,  that  it 
wasn't  possible  to  catch  hold  of  and  examine,  but  whicli 
affected  Caryl  every  time  she  came  to  see  her.  She  decided 
presently  that  it  must  be  the  effect  of  Dick's  deflection. 
Roberta  missed  him,  of  course,  even  among  this  crowd  of  new 
friends,  whose  names,  though  she  flung  them  at  her  so  con- 
tinually,  Caryl  could  never  remember.  For  after  all,  it  was« 
Dick,  not  Roberta,  who  had  made  an  end  of  things,  and  to 
a  Roberta,  surely,  that  was  the  sort  of  thing  which  would  mat- 
ter tremendously.  She  might  grow  tired,  but  not  the  man. 
That  Dick  so  obviously  had,  inverted  her  values  and  turned 
her  silly  little  world  topsy-turvy. 

Poor  Roberta,  who  shut  the  door  on  all  the  things  she  did 
not  like  and  believed  she  left  the  world  clean  and  beautiful 
thereby! — who  live'd  on  the  assumption  that  if  you  pushed 
things  far  enough  away  they  were  no  longer  there  at  all. 

Caryl  was  sorry,  too,  for  Allan,  because  she  thought  that, 
loving  Roberta,  he  must  suffer.  Then  one  day  she  discovered 
that  he  did  not  love  Roberta:  that  he  moved  in  the  same  awful 
bondage  to  her  as  Dick  had  done — that  he  couldn't  escape. 
At  least,  not  yet.  But  he  would,  of  course.  The  people 
who  were  worth  while  always  escaped,  in  the  end,  from 
that  sort  of  thing.  You  couldn't  make  a  life  of  that — nor 
of  the  pain  it  dealt  you.  And  when  Allan  escaped,  what 
then?  "He'll  leave  her,"  Caryl  decided.  She  couldn't  imagine 
Allan  going  on  with  a  tiling  that  was  meaningless,  dead.  Oh, 
he'd  leave  her  right  enough.  No  pity  glanced  back,  bright- 
eyed,  for  Roberta.  Caryl  was  so  sure,  somehow,  that  Roberta 
wouldn't  mind  .  .  .  that  even  now  she  would  herself  do  the 
leaving  if  she  had  the  courage.  But  she  hadn't.  She  was 
waiting  for  Allan  to  open  the  door. 

And  then  one  night  at  the  Attic  Caryl  was  suddenly  sure  of 


INTRUSION  321 

something  else.  .  .  .  Madeleine  was  there  when  she  arrived 
and  Allan  came  in  soon  afterwards  and  found  a  seat  at  her 
side.  Later  the  conversation  drifted  upon  a  discussion  of 
some  modern  novel  in  which  the  heroine  leaves  her  husband 
for  another  man.  The  ethical  discussion  upon  which  the  room 
was  embarked  leaned  definitely  towards  the  view  that  the 
woman  was  justified.  Essentially  modern,  they  took,  all  of 
them — all  who  were  free  of  religious  dogma  or  taboo — that 
marriage  was  like  any  other  contract:  if  you  found  it  impos- 
sible to  keep  its  conditions  it  might  be  broken.  It  wasn't  the 
sort  of  thing  they'd  do,  any  of  them,  flippantly,  but  they  wouldn't 
expect  sane  people  to  put  obstacles  in  their  way. 

Madeleine,  so  far,  had  said  nothing.  And  then  someone 
appealed  to  her.  It  struck  Caryl  that  she  had  purposely  kept 
silent :  that  she  did  not  want  to  speak  and  hoped  the  discussion 
would  pass  her  by.  She  seemed  suddenly  to  realise  that  it 
wasn't  going  to  do  anything  of  the  sort:  that  she  couldn't 
get  out  of  it — whatever  "it"  was.  Leaning  slightly  forward 
in  her  chair  and  averting  her  face  a  little  from  Allan 
(impossible  to  miss  seeing  that)  she  began  to  speak. 

"I  don't  quite  see,"  she  said,  "how  it's  possible  to  take  that 
very  definite  line  about  it.  If  I  say  that  what  would  be  right 
for  some  people  might  be  wrong  for  others  you'll  imagine  I'm 
talking  about  the  religious  taboo.  And  I'm  not.  To  me,  it's 
purely  a  question  of  ...  there  doesn't  seem  any  other  word — 
personal  fastidiousness.  You  see,  what  I  mean  is  this.  This 
woman  had  no  grievance  against  her  husband:  she  recognises 
his  worth  and  character — only,  she  loves  somebody  else." 

Here  somebody  sitting  in  the  shadow  of  A.G.'s  curtain  said 
that  was  just  it.  Somebody  young,  by  her  voice  (and  by  what 
it  said,  Caryl  would  have  added).  "Wouldn't  you  say,"  it 
enquired  of  Madeleine,  "that  love  is  the  only  justification  for 
marriage?" 

"I  should  say,"  said  Madeleine,  "that  you  either  believe 
that  or  you  don't.  This  woman  obviously  didn't  or  she 
wouldn't  have  married  a  man  she  merely  respected.  And 
doesn't  it,  this  view  of  things,  place  rather  too  much 
importance  upon  what  we  call  'love'?  Surely,  love  of  that 
sort  comes  to  few  people.  But  if  you  believe  in  it  at  all  you 
ought  to  believe  in  it  sufficiently  to  wait  for  it.  You  oughtn't 
to  take  second-best  and  then  snatch  the  real  best  when — and 


322  INTRUSION 

if — it  comes  along.  We  ought  to  pay,  oughtn't  we,  for  our 
own  mistakes?  At  least,  we  oughtn't  to  make  other  people 
pay.  .  .  .  And  in  this  case,  surely,  the  husband  did  the  paying. 
Somehow,  I  can't  help  feeling  that  this  woman's  refusal  to  pay 
her  own  debt  soiled  her.  She  may  have  been  happier.  .  .  . 
I'm  sure  she  was.  .  .  .  But  she  was  less  fine.  .  .  ." 

Guen  tossed  a  smoked  cigarette  into  her  empty  fire-place 
and  lighted  another.  "You  mean,"  she  said,  as  she  tossed 
the  match  down  after  the  dead  cigarette,  "that  if  you  made 
a  mistake — of  that  sort — you'd  go  on  with  it.  You  wouldn't 
.  .  .  open  the  door?" 

Madeleine  hesitated.  Caryl  saw  the  colour  come  into  her 
face  as  though  it  disturbed  her  to  have  the  subject  made  per- 
sonal in  this  uncompromising  fashion.  "I  think,"  she  said 
at  length,  "that  I  should  want  ...  a  better  excuse." 

"He'd  have  to  do— the  husband,  I  mean — something  that 
killed  your  respect  .  .  .  that  made  it  impossible  for  you  to  stay  ? 
You  couldn't  just  walk  out?" 

Madeleine  seemed  to  accept  this.  "It  might  be  quite  all 
right  for  others,"  she  said.  "I  feel  sure  it  is.  They'd  feel 
unclean  if  they  stopped.  I  should  feel  unclean  if  I  went." 

For  a  moment  nobody  said  anything.  Then  Allan  took  the 
pipe  out  of  his  mouth  and  spoke. 

"I  see,"  he  said.  "Marriage  for  you  is  what  Matthew 
Arnold  said  religion  was — an  affair  of  morality  touched  with 
emotion." 

Madeleine  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  him  out  of  quiet 
eyes. 

"I  think  I  shouldn't  say  anything  half  as  definite  as  all 
that,"  she  told  him.  "It's  merely  my  own  feeling  about  it. 
I  don't  feel  it's  a  question  of  morality  in  the  ordinary  sense  at 
all:  it  is,  to  me,  just  what  I  said  it  was — a  matter  of  personal 
fastidiousness.  It  sounds  priggish,  I  know,  but  you  can't  say 
what  you  mean  in  English.  ...  It  just  is  that  there  are  some 
things  you  know  you  can't  do.  They  revolt  you — like  certain 
things  to  eat  or  the  feel  of  a  cat's  fur." 

Why  was  it  that  to  Caryl  it  was  as  if  she  uttered  an  ulti- 
matum, as  though  she  gave  Allan  a  Roland  for  his  Oliver  in 
making  the  discussion  personal  in  the  way  he  had? 


INTRUSION  323 


Later,  after  Caryl  had  gone,  Madeleine  went  outside  on  to 
the  verandah.  The  dropping  of  A.G.'s  bright  chintz  curtain 
behind  her  seemed  to  leave  her  free  and  isolated:  she  gave  a 
sigh  of  relief  and  stood  there,  her  hands  on  the  cold  rail  of  the 
balcony,  her  eyes  on  the  maze  of  London  roofs.  Seen  from 
that  height,  the  lights  of  the  city  were  shorn  of  their  blatancy: 
line  after  line  of  them,  like  the  white  stones  of  the  coastguards 
on  the  green  cliffs,  they  marked  out  the  plan  of  the  winding 
streets.  Every  now  and  then,  coming  away  sharply  from  the 
general  buzz  and  with  the  keenness  of  a  pistol  shot,  some 
sound  arrested  her — the  sharp  ping-ping  of  the  bell  in  a  shop 
down  in  one  of  the  streets  immediately  below;  an  angry  voice, 
a  sudden  cry  or  a  shrill  laugh — all  rising  out  of  the  very  heart 
of  the  short  vigil  which  night  keeps  with  humanity. 

A  step  sounded  on  the  stone  and  turning  she  found  that 
Allan,  too,  had  passed  beyond  the  barrier  of  A.G.'s  gay  curtain. 
He  came  to  her  side  and  stood  there  looking  down  and  around. 

"How  clear  the  lights  are,"  he  said  presently,  "that  shows 
how  humid  the  atmosphere  is." 

She  murmured,  "Does  it?"  and  held  a  little  tighter  to  her 
rail.  She  was  white  and  cold,  like  still  waters  under  an  October 
moon.  Allan  moved  nearer  and  put  a  hand  on  hers. 

"Madeleine — you  meant  all  that  in  there,  or  were  you  just 
talking?" 

She  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  him. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "you  never  'just  talk.'  So  it  was,  in  its 
way,  of  course,  an  ultimatum — to  me.  You  wanted  me  to 
understand?" 

Her  affection  for  him,  always  inarticulate,  was  inarticulate 
still;  but  out  there  beneath  a  quiet  sky  it  was  as  if  the  veil  for 
one  moment  was  torn  down.  They  saw  just  where  they  stood 
and  what,  between  them,  they  had  managed  to  miss.  Time 
dissolved.  Nothing  had  ever  happened  or  could  ever  happen. 
There  was  nothing  in  the  world  at  all  save  that  instant  of  com- 
prehension. It  was  as  if  in  it  they  had  both  just  been  born  and 
had  died. 

"We'd  better  go  in,"  she  said,  and  turned  to  do  it,  just  as 
A.G.  lifted  the  curtain  and  his  voice  adjured  them  to  come  in 
and  be  sociable. 


CHAPTER    ELEVEN 


IN  the  days  that  immediately  followed  Allan  stood  away 
from  life,  striving  to  see  things  as  they  were,  as  they 
must  be,  for  Roberta,  for  him  and  for  Madeleine. 

For  Roberta  they  seemed  pleasant  enough.  She  spent  a 
good  deal  of  time,  these  days,  away  from  home,  shedding  the 
light  of  her  beauty  upon  Tommy  Carew  and  her  friends  at 
Pangbourne.  She  wouldn't  go  there  many  more  times  that 
year,  for  the  Indian  summer  was  already  at  its  end.  A  hint 
of  fog  now  in  the  air,  frost  in  the  mornings  and  at  nightfall. 
Tommy  would  be  driven  by  them  back  to  town.  Allan,  how- 
ever, was  not  interested  in  Miss  Carew's  movements  and  had 
long  ago  given  up  trying  to  control  Roberta's.  Her  life  to 
him  was  vague,  incomprehensible:  it  didn't  matter.  He  had 
got  used  to  living  comfortably  without  her  and  was  grateful 
to  her  for  living  so  comfortably  without  him,  for  leaving  him 
alone.  It  was  only  so  they  could  make  anything  at  all  of  this 
bargain  they'd  made  with  life.  If  Roberta  had  made  scenes 
Allan  could  not  have  borne  it.  But  she  didn't:  she  had  no 
temperament  for  scenes  and  loved  comfort  too  well.  You  had 
at  least  to  give  her  credit  for  that  vague  valueless  amiability 
she  carried  about  with  her.  She  did  not  reproach  him  hysteri- 
cally for  the  dullness  of  her  life — perhaps  even  Roberta  knew 
it  was  scarcely  his  fault.  She  went  out  and  found  a  queer 
happiness  of  her  own.  At  least,  Allan  supposed  you  had  to 
call  it  happiness. 

Anyway,  he  left  her  to  it.  He  had  given  her  up.  At  some 
point  the  shackles  had  broken:  the  pachyderm  hardened  and 
thickened.  He  saw  less  and  less  that  this  girl  he  had  married 
was  beautiful  and  only  that  she  was  vain  and  empty.  He  had 
seen  that  many  times  before,  but  never  without  that  halo  of 
beauty.  Now  it  stood  stark,  not  to  be  missed  or  qualified. 
When  she  was  there  before  his  eyes  her  beauty  no  longer  put 

324 


INTRUSION  325 

out  fingers  and  touched  him:  but  sometimes,  when  she  was 
not  there,  when  he  sat  quietly  at  his  work,  some  memory 
would  come  creeping  out  at  him — some  memory  of  the  white 
curve  of  a  shoulder,  a  backward  tantalising  glance,  or  the 
flame  of  her  hair  beneath  a  street  lamp.  Her  beauty  belonged 
to  her  still.  You  couldn't  take  that  away  from  her,  but  it 
moved  him  now  not  to  passion  but  regret.  It  was  ranged 
with  the  things  that  were  dead,  with  the  things  that  had 
promised  so  much  and  proved  so  empty.  Strange  how  it  had 
shrouded  the  petty  soul,  kept  him  for  so  long  from  separating 
her  beauty  from  her  paltriness.  But  to  that  moment  when 
Allan  had  succeeded  in  tearing  them  apart — not  for  a  second, 
but  irrevocably,  so  that  apart  they  must  remain  for  ever — 
belonged  the  beginning  of  that  subduing  of  his  longing  for 
her.  To-day — and  he  realised  it  with  a  shock,  half  triumph, 
half  bitterness — there  was  nothing  left  of  his  passion  for  her 
save  those  faint  fingers  of  beauty  remembered  stealing  out 
after  him  in  the  quiet  dark.  .  .  . 

He  no  longer  wanted  her,  and  he  found  it  no  longer  troubled 
him  to  remember  that  there  were  other  men  who  might,  that 
among  Tommy  Carew's  queer  collection  of  invertebrates  there 
were  probably  men  who  flattered  her  to  her  bent. 

Even  to  himself,  however,  his  detachment  was  extraordinary. 
It  seemed  incredible  that  he  had  ever  cared  as  he  had  or 
incredible  that  he  felt  as  he  felt  now.  ...  It  was  like  moving 
in  a  dream.  Things  happened  inconsequently,  for  no  reason 
at  all.  And  yet  though  he  had  always  known  that  it  must 
happen  like  this:  that  always  there  had  been  the  end  in  sight 
though  shrouded  by  the  mist  of  his  own  passion,  he  was  con- 
scious now  of  an  overpowering  sense  of  impotence.  He  could 
escape — but  escape  no  longer  mattered.  So  far  as  he  could  he 
had  already  excluded  her.  She  had  no  part  anywhere  in  his 
life  and  he  had  locked  his  study  door  against  her  so  that 
her  desultory  tidying-up  should  not  disturb  his  work.  And  the 
tidying-up  was  very  desultory  indeed.  Roberta  was  ceasing 
to  take  even  superficial  pains  with  her  house:  it  wore,  sadly, 
a  mingled  air  of  neglect  and  pathos,  as  though  it  realised  its 
shortcomings,  but  was  prepared  to  do  better  for  them  with 
a  little  encouragement.  In  the  spring,  if  they  were  to  go  on 
living  there,  Allan  supposed  the  house  would  have  to  be  done 
up.  But  he  hated  it,  not  because  of  its  shabbiness,  its  air  of 


326  INTRUSION 

•wilting  under  Roberta's  indifference  and  his  own  scorn,  but 
because  it  harboured  memories  of  all  the  things  that  had 
happened  to  him.  He  hated  the  rooms  in  which  he  had  loved 
and  despaired:  they  seemed  to  be  permeated  with  the  very 
essence  of  his  bitter  humiliation.  He  hated  them  as  you 
hate  rooms  in  which  you've  been  ill,  in  which  you've  stared 
through  heavy  lids  at  pain  and  death.  .  .  . 

Nevertheless,  here  in  this  little  house,  poky,  neglected,  untidy, 
ridiculously  like  a  wooden  box,  he  must  stay.  With  Roberta. 
Later  he  might  exchange  the  box,  but  Roberta  would  still 
be  there,  as  she'd  been  all  the  time.  He'd  never  be  really  free 
of  her.  He  knew  that,  even  though  he  saw  with  a  hideous 
clarity  of  vision  that  there  was  simply  no  reason  at  all  why  this 
thing  should  go  on.  She'd  cheated  him  of  most  of  the  things  he 
wanted  and  now  he  no  longer  wanted  anything  of  her  at  all. 
There  was  nothing  binding  them  together — no  living  child, 
no  memory  of  the  child  who  was  dead.  Neither  did  Allan 
imagine  for  a  moment  that  a  child  could  have  done  anything 
for  them — have  drawn  them  together.  Children  could  only 
have  made  matters  worse.  How  they  would  have  quarrelled 
over  any  child  they  might  have  had !  The  imagination  boggled 
at  the  thought  of  Roberta  as  a  mother. 

Nothing  held  them.  He  could  escape  to-morrow  if  he  liked 
* — if  escape  were  the  only  thing  that  mattered. 


And  it  wasn't.  He  knew  now  that  all  the  things  that  mat- 
tered were  shut  away  behind  Madeleine's  quiet  eyes,  behind 
the  phrases  that  had  assailed  him  as  an  ultimatum.  He  had 
nothing,  there,  to  hope  for.  "Happier  but  less  fine.  .  .  ." 
"We  ought  to  pay  for  our  mistakes.  .  .  ."  He  saw  her  stand- 
ing there  at  the  bar  of  her  own  judgment  and  knew  that  he 
agreed  with  her  verdict.  It  never  occurred  to  him  to  argue 
about  it.  It  wasn't,  anyway,  the  sort  of  thing  you  could  argue 
about.  .  .  .  Either  you  were  like  that,  saw  the  thing  like  that, 
or  you  weren't,  you  didn't.  .  .  .  You  couldn't  get  away  from  it. 
Allan  made  no  attempt  to  get  away  from  it.  He  did  not 
try  to  see  Madeleine.  Whenever  he  faltered  he  remembered 
that  look  on  her  face  in  that  one  moment  when  time  and  space 
had  dissolved.  It  was  all  he  was  to  have,  that  moment:  he 


INTRUSION  327 

daren't  spoil  it.  The  door  of  the  future  was  locked:  the  key 
in  Madeleine's  hands.  There  was  to  be  no  To-morrow.  There 
was  only  To-day — and  a  something  already  strangely  vague 
and  blurred  called  Yesterday,  into  which  he  had  poured  all 
his  hopes  and  emotions. 

And  even  in  the  dull  dead  level  of  To-day  Madeleine  had 
no  share.  He  had  to  learn,  somehow,  to  do  without  her — 
as  she  had  learned,  long  ago,  to  do  without  him.  He  knew  now 
that  he  was  not  essential  to  her  happiness,  that  she  had  made 
life  stand  and  deliver  .  .  .  had  secured  something  satisfying. 
God  alone  knew  what  or  how.  Allan  only  knew  that  he  had 
nothing — that  he  never  would  have  anything.  .  .  . 


Yet,  as  the  autumn  drew  to  its  close,  he  was  not  entirely 
unhappy,  or  even  unhappy  at  all.  His  work  interested  him 
and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  it.  It  did  not  leave  him  over- 
much time  for  thought — of  Yesterday  or  of  To-morrow.  He 
came  also  to  be  grateful  for  two  things — that  Roberta's  queer 
friends  asked  her  so  frequently  to  stay  with  them,  and  that 
when  Guen  came  she  asked  no  questions,  never  showed  that 
she  saw  anything  at  all.  Even  now,  it  seemed,  she  folded  her 
hands,  quiescent,  before  this  fact  of  Allan's  disastrous  mar- 
riage. It  was  as  though  she  saw  they  were  bound  as  ever,  she 
and  Allan,  by  the  cords  of  their  own  futility,  as  though  she 
said:  "We  won't  talk  about  it.  Words,  words,  words.  .  .  . 
What  did  they  ever  do  for  us?" 


CHAPTER   TWELVE 

1 

THERE  seemed  no  reason  why  things  should  not  go  on 
like  this  for  ever.  Allan  was  not  likely  to  complain. 
He'd  made  a  mess  of  things  and  he  couldn't  turn  his 
back  upon  it.  He  wasn't  the  first  man  who'd  bungled  this 
business  of  marriage  and  he  certainly  wasn't  going  to  be  crushed 
by  it.  He  had  slammed  the  'door  on  ecstasy  and  on  despair, 
and  he  thought,  "If  I'm  not  to  know  what  love  is,  at  least  I 
know  what  it  is  not.  It  was  worth  suffering  to  have  learnt 
that." 

He  saw  little  of  Roberta  throughout  October.  Almost 
invariably  when  he  came  home  she  was  seeking  amusement 
elsewhere,  but  she  always  returned  in  respectable  time  and 
amiably  enough.  Allan  saw  that  if  he  left  her  alone  he'd  have 
peace.  He  left  her  alone. 

Week-ends  were  the  worst,  and  he  thanked  Heaven  that 
Tommy  Carew  remained  at  Pangbourne,  fog  or  no  fog,  and 
continued  to  ask  her  down  there.  He  was  bored  by  her  recital 
of  adventures  and  was  glad  when  Caryl  sometimes  looked  in 
to  listen  to  them  and  he  might  escape. 

But  Caryl's  visits  these  days  were  not  too  frequent:  she  was 
divided  alternately  between  her  work  and  Dick;  but  when 
she  came  to  Meldon  Avenue  she  was  always  alone.  As  far  as 
Allan  knew  Roberta  and  Dick  had  not  met  for  weeks.  Of 
course  there  had  never  been  anything  in  that.  Hadn't  he 
always  known  Pen  was  on  the  wrong  track  ? 

Caryl,  these  days,  was  a  cheerful  person.  The  tense 
strung-up  note  about  her  had  gone,  and  Allan  envied  her,  as  he 
had  envied  her  before,  her  trick  of  happiness. 

It  was  at  the  beginning  of  November  that  Roberta  went 
down  to  Pangbourne  for  her  final  week-end.  (Tommy,  she 
said,  "fed  up  with  the  fog,"  was  coming  back  to  her  flat  in 
the  following  week.)  It  happened,  too,  that  Dick  was  at  Read- 

328 


INTRUSION  329 

ing  that  week-end,  and  Caryl  turned  up  after  lunch  to  reproach 
Allan  for  not  having  come  around  to  Adelaide  Lodge  for 
the  meal  and  to  get  him  to  take  her  and  Leader  for  a  walk. 
She'd  been  bored  to  death,  she  explained,  by  the  household 
that  day.  Her  father  and  mother  had  gone  down  into  Surrey 
to  visit  somebody  or  other  (somebody  Jan  used  to  know.  Did 
Allan  know  who  it  was  and  why  this  horrible  secrecy?)  and 
Tom  and  Pen  together  were  a  little  too  much  for  Caryl.  She'd 
got  up  at  five  to  work  and  had  taken  Master  Jan  out  until 
lunch,  but  that  young  man  was  now  sleeping  and  it  was  dull 
work  listening  to  Tom  and  Pen  on  the  prospect  of  Master  Jan's 
baby-sister,  who  was  to  make  her  appearance  in  the  spring. 

"It's  all  very  fine,"  Caryl  sat  on  the  edge  of  Allan's  table 
and  complained,  "but  really  they  do  rather  overdo  it.  Tom 
insists  upon  treating  Pen  like  an  invalid:  anybody'd  think 
she  was  in  danger  of  expiring  at  any  moment  in  dreadful 
torment  before  his  eyes.  This  view  of  a  wife  as  an  actual  or 
potential  invalid  is  depressing,  you  ;know,  old  thing.  If  I  may 
say  so,  you  were  a  jolly  sight  more  sensible  over  Roberta's  little 
affair " 

"I'm  glad  I  pleased  you,"  Allan  said,  looking  up  from  the 
article  he'd  said  he  must  finish  before  he  took  Caryl  out.  "I 
know  you  want  to  let  off  steam,  but  do  hold  it  in  for  five  min- 
utes. All  the  words  I  can  think  of  are  adjectives,  and  I've 
a  prejudice  in  favour  of  one  noun  and  one  verb  at  least  in  a 
sentence.  There  are  some  cigarettes  on  the  mantelpiece.  Go 
and  help  yourself." 

Discovering  the  cigarettes  Caryl  discovered  also  the  dust. 
"Inches  of  it!"  she  said,  "everywhere!" 

Allan  apologised.  Roberta  didn't  care  for  dusting,  and  in 
any  case  he  didn't  care  for  Roberta's  interpretation  of  the 
word — flicking  the  dust  from  one  place  to  another.  "Besides," 
he  said,  "she  forgets  all  about  it,  and  when  she  remembers 
and  arrives  with  the  necessary  implement  I've  got  quite  used 
to  the  dust — at  least  I  prefer  it  where  it  is." 

Caryl  let  him  finish  his  article  and  she  coaxed  Leader  into 
doing  it  too.  For  Leader,  who  understood  not  only  English 
but  French  and  German  as  well,  and  from  whom  the  word 
"walk"  could  not  be  disguised,  was  thoroughly  well  aware 
that  this  trot  from  house  to  house  was  only  a  pleasant  prelude 
to  a  real  outing  upon  the  Heath.  Presently,  when  Allan  laid 


330  INTRUSION 

down  his  pen,  Caryl  went  out  and  found  a  cloth  with  which 
she  removed  the  dust  from  the  furniture,  whilst  an  agitated 
Leader  informed  her  she  was  wasting  much  precious  time, 
and  Allan  put  on  his  boots. 

Ready  first,  she  pulled  back  Roberta's  dirty  curtains,  which 
that  young  woman  kept  flatly  spread  across  the  window,  and 
looked  out.  The  quiet  suburban  road  was  deserted:  nobody 
else  seemed  smitten  with  this  desire  to  walk.  Nothing  what- 
ever to  see  save  a  row  of  tiny  houses  in  the  grip  of  Sunday, 
and  winter  jasmine  climbing  like  yellow  stars  over  the  one 
immediately  opposite.  From  the  clipped  suburban  trees  the 
coloured  leaves  dropped  straightly  to  the  ground.  There  was 
no  wind.  Where  the  dead  leaf  fell  there  did  it  rest.  Almost 
as  if  she  had  been  Guen  that  line  from  Keats  jumped  out  at 
her  and  fixed  the  picture.  A  melancholy  young  man,  Keats, 
his  mind  full  of  nice  thoughts  about  death  and  pain,  but  he'd 
written  lines  that  you  couldn't  forget.  .  .  .  And  that  yellow 
jasmine ! — how  nice  of  those  people  opposite  to  have  planted  it. 

When  Allan  came  down  they  locked  up  the  little  wooden 
box  and  went  out  on  to  the  Heath.  Allan  hated  the  time  of 
the  year,  hated  to  see  the  months,  growing  wan  and  cold  in 
autumn's  diaphanous  robe,  slipping  one  by  one  into  the  lap  of 
winter:  and  he,  too,  was  grateful  to  the  people  who'd  had  the 
foresight  to  plant  the  winter  jasmine. 

It  was  dark  when  they  got  back:  the  early  stars  gleamed 
coldly  through  the  branches  of  the  trees:  the  sky  had  the  quiet 
of  the  windless  day.  On  the  still  moist  air  were  borne  the 
floating  scents  of  autumn:  one  did  not  admit,  yet,  that  it  was 
winter. 

Indoors  was  a  bright  fire — bright  enough  for  toast,  and 
while  Caryl  was  making  it  Allan  found  cups  and  saucers  in 
the  kitchen  and  put  on  a  kettle  to  boil.  Leader,  who  loved  a 
fire,  scorched  his  nose  against  a  very  hot  fender  and  retired, 
looking  chagrined. 

Caryl  laughed. 

"Do  you  remember  how  he  used  to  sit  by  Alice  while  she 
did  the  grate  in  the  morning?"  she  asked  Allan  who  came  in 
just  then  with  his  tray.  "And  how  you  used  to  say  that  in 
his  doggie  mind  you  were  sure  he  called  Alice  Prometheus?" 

Allan  laughed. 

"Good  Lord,  yes !     How  long  ago  that  seems  1" 


INTRUSION  331 

Caryl  turned  back  to  her  toast.  Allan,  watching  her,  was 
struck,  as  he  had  been  every  time  he  looked  at  her  this  after- 
noon, by  the  air  of  quiet  happiness  she  wore  and  which  fitted 
her  like  a  garment.  He  was  in  the  mood  to  envy  her.  He 
supposed  he'd  feel  like  that  pretty  often,  having  made  a  mess 
of  things  himself.  But  in  a  sense  he'd  always  envied  Caryl: 
had  always  seen  that  she  had  something  he  and  Guen  had  not. 
The  youngest  of  her  family  by  more  than  seven  years,  it  was 
as  if,  in  her,  Nature  had  permitted  herself  a  glorious  finishing 
up,  giving  her  the  best  qualities  of  her  brothers  and  sisters, 
but  toning  them  up,  investing  them  with  some  bright  quality 
of  optimism  that  was  allied  to,  not  divorced  from,  thought, 
as  it  was  in  Pen  and  had  been  in  Jan. 

Caryl  had  toasted  her  third  piece  of  bread  and  had  impaled 
the  fourth  on  Roberta's  toasting-fork  when  a  step  came  outside 
and  the  sound  of  a  knock  on  the  door.  Leader,  roused  from 
his  reverie  of  hot  fenders,  trotted  off  to  the  door,  then  turned 
to  stare  back  at  Caryl,  who  paused  with  her  slice  of  bread  in 
mid-air  and  frowned. 

"Allan!  A  knock!  Will  you  go?"  and  as  he  came  past  the 
half-shut  door  she  called,  "If  it's  Pen  come  to  haul  us  off  to 
tea,  we  aren't  going." 

But  it  wasn't  Pen.  The  voice  at  the  door  was  deep  and 
gruff  and  it  enquired  for  Mr.  Suffield — Mr.  Allan  Suffield. 
Leader  squeezed  himself  through  the  door  and  Caryl  con- 
tinued her  toasting  with  a  little  wrinkling  of  her  forehead. 
With  vague  careless  curiosity  she  wondered  who  Allan's  visitor 
might  be.  She  hoped  he  wouldn't  stay  long.  She  wanted  her 
tea. 

The  toast  smelt  good  and  she  turned  her  slice,  pausing 
once  in  the  operation  to  listen,  still  with  puzzled,  frowning 
brows.  The  deep,  strange  voice  disturbed  her  and  she  noticed 
that  Allan  didn't  seem  to  be  saying  much.  .  .  .  The  smell  of 
burning  toast  assailed  her.  She  had  forgotten  it.  Mechanically 
she  impaled  another  slice,  held  it  out  to  the  fire,  then  lowered 
it  into  the  ashes.  She  looked,  on  the  instant,  alert  and  nervous. 
And  the  gruff  voice  out  there  at  the  door  went  on. 

She  realised  now  that  she  was  listening — and  afraid.  She 
did  not  know  why  or  of  what:  but  as  she  knelt  there  on  the 
hearthrug  all  her  body  was  one  live  wire  of  apprehension. 
She  felt  suddenly  most  horribly  alone — deserted.  Nothing 


332  INTRUSION 

kept  her  company  but  her  fear  and  gradually  that  was  building 
itself  up  about  her  like  a  wall.  Another  minute  and  she  fled 
from  it  as  from  something  tangible.  She  flew  to  the  door, 
opened  it  and  stood  there,  not  daring  to  let  go  of  the  handle. 
But  she  saw  now  to  whom  the  gruff  voice  belonged,  for  there 
at  the  front  door  stood  a  policeman,  at  whose  coat  tails  Leader 
sniffed  with  displeasure.  A  policeman!  For  a  second  her 
mind  seemed  to  stand  still,  then  went  on  with  a  bound.  .  .  . 
Of  course.  Hadn't  she  known  it?  Hadn't  she  known  that 
gruff  voice  could  belong  to  nobody  else?  But  a  policeman — 
at  Allan's  door!  She  stood  there,  staring  at  him,  as  if  fas- 
cinated. When  he  moved  she  could  see,  just  beyond  his 
shoulder,  the  winter  jasmine  across  the  road,  gleaming  palely 
in  the  dark.  She  tried  to  say  something,  to  call  Allan,  but  her 
voice  refused  to  obey  her  bidding.  Leader,  quite  certain  by 
now  that  he  disliked  the  smell  of  the  policeman,  began  to 
bark.  .  .  .  Allan's  voice  rang  out  with  penetrating  sharpness; 
"Shut  up!"  Caryl,  numb  with  the  sense  of  impending  horror, 
saw  the  dog  come  instantly  to  heel,  as  if  he  realised  that 
something  no  dog  could  possibly  understand  was  happening 
to  these  people  he  loved.  Again  Caryl  tried  to  speak  and 
again  failed.  Something  awful  had  happened — and  to  Dick. 
At  least,  now,  she  knew  that.  In  another  moment  she  would 
know  what  .  .  .  but  she  stood  there  leaning  weakly  against 
the  door  as  if  she  would  stretch  that  moment  of  not  knowing 
into  eternity.  Then  with  a  horrible  violence  her  voice  came 
tearing  from  her. 

"Allan!" 

He  turned  and  she  saw  his  grey  face.  As  he  came  towards 
her  the  protective  gesture  with  which  he  put  an  arm  about  her 
slew  her  last  lingering  hope.  She  turned  in  his  arms,  hiding 
the  white  misery  of  her  face  against  his  coat.  What  he  said 
didn't  matter.  She  knew.  There'd  been  an  accident  and  Dick 
was  dead! 

But  that  wasn't  the  word  he  used.  Dick  wasn't  dead.  He 
was  only  hurt  .  .  .  Oh,  why  didn't  Allan  say  it  straight  out? 
Did  he  think  she  couldn't  bear  it?  She  raised  her  head  and 
stared  at  him.  Oh,  but  you  didn't  look — like  that — just  because 
somebody  was  hurt.  .  .  .  Why  should  Allan  look  like  that  unless 
Dick  were  killed? 


INTRUSION  333 

"You  mean,  he's  .  .  .  dead?"  she  said,  and  still  her  voice 
seemed  to  come  tearing  painfully  out  of  her. 

Allan  shook  his  head. 

"No,"  he  said,  "broken  leg.     He'll  soon  be  all  right." 

Something  desperate  seemed  to  be  happening  to  Caryl.  She 
pushed  Leader's  sympathetic  nose  away,  moved  out  of  the 
circle  of  Allan's  arms  and  stood  there,  a  hand  at  her  lips.  All 
this  for  a  broken  leg!  Had  they  all  gone  mad?  She  wanted 
to  laugh.  Then,  suddenly,  she  saw  that  the  broken  leg  wasn't 
all. 

"Allan,  for  God's  sake  .  .  .  what  is  it?" 

But  she  saw  that  he  couldn't  answer,  that  some  horrible 
emotion  had  seized  him  in  its  clutch.  Something  omnipotent 
got  hold  of  her,  steadying  her.  She  turned  to  the  policeman 
at  the  door. 

"Please,"  she  said,  "will  you  tell  me  just  what  has 
happened?" 

He  told  her.  No  emotion  clutched  at  the  policeman  and 
he  wore  an  air  of  being  used  to  other  people's.  But  he  was 
mercifully  brief — no  fear,  this  time,  that  she  wouldn't  under- 
stand. He  gave  her  the  facts — a  collision  between  a  motor-car 
and  the  motor-cycle  belonging  to  a  Mr.  Richard  Merrick.  .  .  . 
The  people  in  the  motor  had  escaped  with  shock  and  bruises, 
but  the  motor-cycle  and  sidecar  had  overturned.  Mr.  Merrick 
had  sustained  a  broken  leg:  he'd  be  all  right  in  a  few  weeks, 
but  the  young  lady,  the  policeman  regretted  to  say  .  .  .  the 
young  lady  was  dead  when  they  picked  her  up. 

"The  .  .  .  young  lady?"  said  Caryl,  black  waters  all  about 
her. 

"Name  of  Suffield,  Miss.  .  .  .  This  gentleman's  wife,  I 
understand." 

The  black  waters  receded.  Caryl's  own  unbelievable  calm 
dammed  them  up. 

"Will  you  tell  me,  please,  where  the  accident  happened?" 

"Ten  minutes'  run  out  of  Wokingham  village.  .  .  ." 

"They  had  been  staying  there?" 

"Place  called  the  Cottage.  .  .  ." 

Those  three  names  rang  in  her  ears.  They'd  do  it,  surely, 
till  she  died.  Wokingham  .  .  .  Reading  .  .  .  Pangbourne.  .  .  . 
Dick  had  been  at  Reading,  Roberta  at  Pangbourne.  So  they 
had  believed.  .  .  .  And  they  hadn't  been.  They'd  been  there 


334  INTRUSION 

together  at  Wokingham  ...  at  her  cottage,  where  lately  she'd 
been  so  happy. 

Extraordinary  how  the  mind  boggled  at  a  fact  like  that.  It 
simply  couldn't  be  true.  This  sort  of  thing  didn't  happen  .  .  . 
at  least  it  didn't  happen  to  you.  .  .  . 

Presently  somebody  must  have  shut  the  door.  The  policeman 
had  gone. 


If  they  hadn't  chosen  the  Cottage  she  thought  it  might  not 
have  hurt  quite  so  much.  "He  might  have  spared  me  that!" 
she  said.  It  was  all  she  did  say,  sitting  there  in  Roberta's 
little  dining-room  where  still  there  lingered  the  smell  of  burnt 
toast.  There  wasn't  anything  to  say:  it  wasn't  a  thing  you 
could  talk  about :  but  you'd  see  it  for  ever — a  dark  smear  across 
the  pageantry  of  life.  .  .  . 

For  ever.  Caryl  turned  her  head  in  dumb  misery  against 
her  cushion,  as  though  she  couldn't  bear  it,  and  something  in 
her  face,  when  presently  Allan  found  courage  to  turn  and  look 
at  her,  snapped  the  thread  of  his  own  misery  so  that  he  could 
think  of  nothing  but  her  and  her  suffering. 

He  saw  that  it  was  profound :  that  it  wrapped  her  round  like 
a  ring  of  flame.  She  was  beyond  words:  beyond  tears.  She 
looked  as  though,  very  slowly,  she  was  being  burned  alive. 


EPILOGUE 

AN  intrusion,  Guen  called  it,  writing  five  weeks  later  to 
Madeleine,  something  that  came  soiling  the  clean  surface 
of  life,  smudging  its  pattern.  .  .  . 

Already  (she  wrote)  it's  a  little  difficult  to  believe  it  has 
really  happened.  It  isn't  possible,  somehow,  that  this  has 
happened  to  us.  Or  is  it  that  Roberta  doesn't  matter  .  .  . 
that  she  really  doesn't,  even  now;  that  she  was  herself  so 
trivial  that  nothing  that  has  happened  through  her  can  affect 
us — much,  or  for  long?  I'd  believe  that,  I  think,  but  for 
Caryl.  Caryl  cuts  clean  across  all  the  theories  and  consolations 
one  builds  up  for  oneself.  .  .  . 

It  must  have  been  instantaneous,  Roberta's  death,  for  she 
was  dead  when  they  picked  her  up.  Though  her  neck  was 
broken,  her  face  was  untouched.  She  couldn't  even  have  seen 
Death  coming.  .  .  .  She  took  her  beauty,  unimpaired,  to  the 
grave,  as  though  even  Death  knew  what  would  please  her  most. 

But  to  die  like  that,  with  all  your  littlenesses  and  deceits 
upon  you!  Nothing,  surely,  can  atone  for  that?  For  the 
littlenesses  and  deceits  were  there,  like  her  beauty,  to  the  end — 
and  as  much  a  part  of  her.  Even  Death,  I  suppose,  couldn't 
separate  them. 

Caryl  threw  the  story  at  me  .  .  .  that  Sunday  evening  .  .  . 
the  story  of  Dick's  infatuation.  She'd  been  through  a  bad  time 
with  him,  had  come  to  the  end  of  her  tether,  and  then,  sud- 
denly, Dick  had  "recovered."  She  sticks  to  it  still  that  he 
had,  taking  Dick's  word  for  it,  bending  her  head  before  what 
he  has  since  called  that  "moment  of  temptation."  The  near- 
ness of  Reading  and  Pangbourne,  she  said,  had  never  worried 
her.  .  .  .  She  offers  it,  the  poor  child,  as  proof  of  her  faith  in 

335 


336  INTRUSION 

his  "recovery."  And  then,  on  the  Sunday,  that  story  .  .  .  that 
pitched  her  faith,  like  her  happiness,  in  the  dust.  Dick  hadn't 
"recovered."  He'd  been  week-ending  there  at  the  Cottage  with 
Roberta  and  Roberta  .  .  .  was  dead. 

That  was  how  Caryl  and  Allan  had  it — like  a  smack  in 
the  face.  When  Tony  and  I  got  there  at  midnight  she  was 
quiet.  She'd  been  like  that  all  the  time,  Allan  said.  Not 
frozen,  not  stunned:  she  wasn't  missing  any  of  the  pain. 
It  was  as  though  her  misery  were  an  inward  flame,  consuming 
her.  Allan's  phrase  gives  it  you.  "I  can't  stand  it,"  he  said, 
"she  looks  as  though  she's  being  burnt  alive!" 

She  did.  She  went  on  looking  like  it  for  days.  .  .  .  And 
Roberta's  letter,  confirming  Sunday  evening's  story,  wasn't 
likely  to  help  her.  Roberta  must  have  posted  it  just  before 
she  set  out  for  that  last  ride,  with  Death  lurking,  deliberative, 
in  the  shadows.  ("Oh,  I'll  leave  you  your  beauty,  never 
fear!")  Roberta-ish,  that  letter — pure  unadulterated  Roberta! 
• — and  she  offered  it  to  Allan  as  documentary  proof  of  her 
"unfaithfulness."  She  wrote  it  with  her  eye  on  the  Courts: 
stated  in  her  bald,  not  too-grammatical  way  that  she'd  not 
spent  that  week-end  at  Pangbourne  at  all,  but  at  the  Cottage 
with  Dick.  Allan  had  his  remedy:  would  he  please  take  it? 
And  at  the  end  a  still  more  Roberta-ish  touch  .  .  .  that  sug- 
gestion of  herself  as  a  delicate  creature  in  an  indelicate  world. 
Of  course  she  did  not  love  Dick  and  nothing  would  induce  her 
to  marry  him.  But  Dick  was  in  love  with  her  .  .  .  and  the 
law  wouldn't  let  people  be  decent.  Voila!  If  Allan  wasn't 
gentleman  enough.  ...  In  short,  she  wanted  her  freedom  and 
meant  to  have  it.  I  try  not  to  suspect  some  rich,  not  too 
particular  parti  in  the  background.  .  .  . 

And  this  precious  document  Allan  must  needs  show  Caryl. 
"She's  got  to  know,"  he  said.  Reading  it  Caryl  broke  down. 
When  her  wild  fit  of  crying  was  done  she  said  she  must  see 
Dick.  It  wasn't  possible,  the  hospital  people  said,  and  talked 
about  a  dangerous  temperature.  It  wasn't  possible  for  a  week 
and  for  a  whole  week  Caryl  went  on  living  with  that  story.  .  .  . 

In  between  came  the  inquest.  Astonishing,  there,  what  we 
did  with  the  story.  ...  It  emerged  a  decent  casual  affair, 
with  tragedy  running  out  at  it  ...  clutching  it  by  the  heels. 
Everybody  was  very  kind.  .  .  .  "Great  sympathy  was  expressed 
for  the  relatives.  .  .  ."  I  wanted  to  go  somewhere  and  shriek. 


INTRUSION  337 

We  buried  Roberta  (how  she  would  have  enjoyed  her  own 
funeral  and  the  interest  it  aroused!)  and  two  days  later  Caryl 
sat  by  Dick's  bedside  and  learned  that  the  letter  she  had 
written  to  Allan  wasn't  true. 

It  simply  wasn't  true  .  .  .  what  she'd  said.  Knowing  Roberta, 
I  wonder  any  of  us  ever  believed  it  was.  .  .  .  What  was  true 
was  that  she  and  Dick  had  met — a  mere  chance  encounter — 
on  the  Saturday  in  Reading:  that  for  Dick  the  meeting  had 
meant  a  renewal  of  the  old  passionate  attraction,  the  sudden 
yielding  to  opportunity — or  what  had  looked  like  opportunity. 
.  .  .  For  Roberta  cheated  him  after  all  ...  as  she'd  always 
meant  to  cheat  him.  They  went  over  together  to  the  Cottage 
on  the  Saturday  and — Roberta  remained  true  to  herself.  .  .  . 

Dick  swears  he  didn't  even  sleep  under  the  same  roof:  his 
disgust  drove  him  out  into  the  Berkshire  lanes  and  woods, 
where  he  didn't  sleep  at  all.  He'd  hated  her  all  the  night  for 
having  made  a  fool  of  him  ...  for  having,  as  he  thought,  lost 
courage,  backed  out,  at  {he  end.  .  .  . 

Then,  in  the  morning,  he  saw  that  she  hadn't  "lost  cour- 
age," that  she'd  never  meant  to  yield  .  .  .  that  she'd  been  using 
him.  Him! — with  all  the  other  men  she  might  have  fooled! 
Or  was  it  that  she  knew  she  couldn't — that  Dick  was  the  only 
man  she  could  trust  .  .  .  who  wouldn't  make  things  unpleasant 
for  her,  keep  her  to  her  bargain?  She  was  so  certain  Dick 
would  hold  his  tongue:  under  promise,  perhaps,  of  future 
favours  or  because  she  didn't  believe  any  man  would  like  it 
known  that  a  girl  had  made  that  particular  sort  of  fool  of  him. 

Anyway,  on  the  Sunday  morning  Dick  seems  to  have  indi- 
cated that  he  wasn't  going  to  hold  his  tongue.  ...  I  gather 
that  he  lost  his  temper,  laid  hands  upon  her.  .  .  .  Later,  she 
half  won  him  by  the  bruises  she  showed  him  on  her  arms, 
and  ultimately  he  relented  so  far  as  to  consent  to  drive  her 
back  to  the  Carew  woman's  house  at  Pangbourne.  .  .  .  That 
was  at  half-past  one.  At  half-past  one  she'd  been  showing 
him  the  bruises  on  her  pretty  arms  .  .  .  and  at  a  quarter  to 
two  she  was  dead  in  the  roadway.  .  .  . 

To  die  like  that,  with  all  one's  meannesses  and  lies  thick 
upon  one!  That's  what's  so  shocking.  There's  something 
in  that,  I  think,  which  hurts  as  Roberta's  death  itself  doesn't 
hurt  and  never  will.  .  .  . 

An  episode,  Roberta's  coming  and  going.  ...  In  a  way  I 


338  INTRUSION 

think  I've  always  seen  it  like  that,  and  in  a  way  it's  fitting, 
I  suppose,  that  she  should  have  provided  it  with  so  dramatic 
a  climax.  .  .  .  How  it  would  please  her  histrionic  little  soul 
if  she  could  know  how  very  dramatic  it  was!  De  mortuis.  .  .  . 
Ah,  don't  remind  me.  ...  At  present  there's  something  hard, 
something  rebellious  in  me  that  refuses  to  fold  quiet  hands 
before  the  obliterating  kindliness  of  that  phrase. 

I  could  forgive  her  if  I  could  forget  Caryl.  So,  perhaps, 
could  we  all.  .  .  .  Even  Allan,  who  suffers  so  much  less.  And 
there  isn't  anything  any  one  of  us  can  do  for  her.  .  .  . 
Her  courage  is  greater  than  ours,  and  since  that  day  at  the 
hospital  she  no  longer  looks  as  though  she  is  being  burned 
alive.  It's  as  though  Dick's  story — his  contradiction  of 
Roberta's  "facts" — relieved  her  from  some  intolerable  pain, 
stamped  out  the  flame  of  despair  that  was  eating  her  up  and 
lighted  that  of  hope.  You  can  almost  see  her  standing  there 
before  it,  warming  her  hands.  .  .  . 

Do  you  remember  how  she  used  to  say,  during  the  war,  that 
life  went  deeper  than  all  the  horror  and  blood  .  .  .  that  down 
below  was  something  fine,  something  indestructible  ?  As  though 
she  seemed  always  to  see  life's  smiling  face  beneath  the  trap- 
pings of  woe;  as,  God  help  us,  we  never  did.  .  .  . 

She's  like  that  now:  I  can't  pretend  to  know  what  is  going 
to  happen  to  her  ...  or  to  Dick.  I  only  see  her  standing 
there  with  wide  eyes  staring  over  the  edge  of  her  ruined  Now 
into  the  future  ...  as  though  she  has  braced  her  shoulders  to 
the  burden  of  life  and  found  it,  after  all,  not  too  heavy.  She 
has  something — as  you  have  and  mother — that  Allan  and  I 
have  never  had;  some  inner  knowledge  and  quiet  that  never 
fails  her.  Whatever  she  is,  she  is  not  futile.  Life  will  not 
take  and  break  her.  Be  very  sure  of  that.  Her  courage  is 
worth  more  to  her  than  our  happiness  to  us.  ...  She  can 
build  anew  what  lies  in  ruins  at  her  feet. 

To-day  Dick  leaves  England.  Against  everybody's  advice 
she  went  yesterday  to  say  good-bye.  "Why  shouldn't  I?"  she 
said.  "It  won't  hurt  me.  ...  I  don't  believe  anything  will 
ever  be  able  to  hurt  me  again.  .  .  ." 

After  those  days,  she  meant,  when  she'd  lived  with  the 
thought  that  Dick  had  belonged  to  Roberta. 

"And  when  he  comes  back!"  I  said,  "what  then?  Are  you 
going  to  marry  him — in  the  face  of  the  family  wrath?" 


INTRUSION  339 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  and  she  smiled  a  little — I  sup- 
pose at  the  idea  of  the  family  wrath.  Then  suddenly  she 
stopped  smiling.  "A  year's  a  long  time,"  she  said. 

And  there  she  stands,  looking  down  the  vista  of  days.  .  .  . 
The  vista  isn't  empty,  even  now.  .  .  .  You  can't  look  at  her 
without  suspecting  that  already  hope  comes  riding  up  out  of  the 
shadows.  .  .  . 


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